Rushlight Club 85th Anniversary Meeting
Winterthur, Delaware, October 27th - 29th, 2017
The Rushlight Club and Winterthur Museum partnered in October and presented an amazing two-day symposium to lighting specialists, students, historic house and museum curators, and preservation and technology experts, which focused on material and social histories of artificial light in North American interiors.
Speakers included lighting specialists, authors, curators and others with excellent credentials. The Rushlight Club was proud to provide three of the speakers, Jeffrey Evans, Charles Leib, and Daniel Mattausch.
Dan Mattausch and several other Club members presented a seminar entitled: A Working Demonstration of 19th-Century Lighting Technology: Sight, Smell, and Sound. Many of the lamps on display were brought by Dan Mattausch, Jeff Smith and Jamie Jones.
Pat. 48860, July 18, 1865
Chuck Leib's seminar "Fakes, Reproductions, Marriages and Myths" showed devices often mistaken for lamps such as the 1872, Hutchinson pat. 133316, Oiler/Lubricator, and the 1867, Zimmerman pat. 67244, Insect Destroyer. He discussed reproduction candle sconces and colonial iron floor-stands as shown in the I. Sack Catalog "Authentic Reproductions of Antique Lighting Fixtures" and compared an original Sandwich lamp having 17 beads in the glass base with a reproduction having 16 beads.
Saturday evening the Club held its usual meeting events at the Concordville Inn. The banquet, silent auction, show and tell, and membership meeting were attended by 46 Rushlighters. Show and tell included many items, some of which were unusual. The silent auction also had several unusual items which prompted some fast and furious bidding. The business meeting included the election of officers for the year 2018. It was truly a social and festive event!
Sunday Morning was the 85th Anniversary Meeting. The meeting kicked off with the President, Donna Schoenly, presenting citations of service to all the past Presidents. John Shallcross, James Eaton, Bill Dixon, and Frank Walton could not attend and were mailed their citations. Those in attendance were: Keith Letsche, Peter Gregory, Dan Mattausch, Don Schoenly, Larson Mick, and Gerald Mercer. Donna asked them to share memories of their Presidency or what the Rushlight Club has meant to them. With so many positives being spoken, a lively conversation ensued with Club members also offering their memories. Making new friends, sharing knowledge with people who have similar interests, the Rushlight Publications, and a chance to show off that new "find" that no one else saw on EBay were just some of the reasons people became members of the Rushlight Club.
A new publication was then unveiled---"Photos from The Rushford Slide Collection". Don Schoenly explained how the publication came about and why it is significant. If you did not attend the Celebration the publication will be available by mail for a nominal charge plus postage. The Meeting ended with Anniversary cake and coffee.
