Report of the Rushlight Club 2011 Summer Meeting & NAALC Gathering, July 19th-24th, Indianapolis, Indiana
An auction of kerosene era lamps, chimneys and parts on Tuesday evening began the Gathering activities. Part of the collection of the late Bill Schrieber, the auction items included a wide variety of lamps and burners. Among the more unusual items were Hitchcock and Kranzow mechanical lamps, an ornate Argand railroad car-side lamp by Adams & Westlake and logo chimneys for Canchester, Coleman, Fellboelin, Lumo, Saxonia, Solar and others
Room trading began early in the week and increased daily as the show registrants continued to arrive for the lamp show on Friday and Saturday. The lighting items available ranged from lard and turpentine lamps to a vast number of miniature, flat wick and round wick lamps. The usual Thursday Aladdin auction was well attended, as was the Gathering Opening Dinner on Thursday evening.
The Rushlight Club had a display table at the lamp show on Friday and Saturday to make people aware of the Club and of the benefits of membership. Three new members joined the Club and a number of Club publications were sold. All Club officers attending this meeting took turns manning the table during the show. Other lighting clubs represented at the show were the Night Light Club and the International Coleman Collectors Club.
Forty-six, members and non-members attended the Rushlight Dinner on Friday evening. Non-Club members are invited to attend the dinner as a way to promote awareness of the Club. Rushlight President, Larson Mick began the dinner meeting by asking Peter Brickell to light the rush. Peter had kindly provided a number of early lamps to burn at the tables during the dinner. Don Schoenly, program chair, discussed the Club's planned fall meeting in Winterthur, Delaware, October 7th - 10th, 2011.
Educational seminars on Friday and Saturday were very well attended with most having "standing room only" for those who didn't come early. This year, the seminars were scheduled by Rushlight members Dan and Nancy Mattausch. Dan also presented one of the seminars as did Rushlight members Heinz and Ursula Baumann and Peter Brickell. Heinz narrated a detailed slide presentation on turpentine burning lamps in the 1830 to 1860 time period.
While the material presented is serious, the presentation is sometimes light-hearted. Dan fulfilled a mandate to "dig up something new" by pulling a rubber skeleton, supposedly of Victor Johnson, Aladdin's founder, from a trunk. Peter Brickell concluded a somewhat technical overview of hydrocarbon fuel properties by extinguishing his lamp with a blast from a CO2 fire extinguisher.
The NAALC Saturday evening banquet concluded the Gathering Activities. After the customary Gathering quilt auction and raffle, door prizes were distributed and the Aladdin lamp burning at each banquet table was won by someone at that table.
Following the Sunday farewell breakfast, provided by the NAALC, eleven people drove to the James Whitcomb Riley Museum and took a privately conducted tour of the home and viewed the lighting, primarily gas with some early electric, in place when the home became a museum shortly after Riley's death. in 1916.
The Rushlight Club Inc. www.rushlight.org