Restored theatre lighting, transformed into beautiful feature lamps for your home.
I've always had a huge passion for the theatre, and especially scenic design and lighting effects.
Over the last 10-20 years there has been a huge shift from using traditional incandescent lamps (bulbs) to the use of LED (Light emitting diode). You may recognise the LED as being the red stand-by light on your TV.
Recently there has been major advances in LED technology, LED's are smaller than traditional incandescent lamps and don't get as hot - this means that casings for theatrical lights and spotlights can be made smaller and lighter and are becoming more affordable.
Also colour changing and colour mixing technologies with LED lights means that traditional methods to produce coloured lighting effects such as coloured filter gels and colour wheels are now unfortunately redundant.
Modern theatre lights with moving lantern heads mounted on motorised bases means that large traditional follow spots which were moved by hand by a lighting operator are also no longer required.
Theatres up and down the country are now upgrading their lighting systems which means lots of beautiful old theatre lights are being disposed of many of them are sadly simply thrown in a skip or weighed in as scrap metal.
At Stage Left Lux we've made it our mission to save and preserve some of our wonderful theatrical history, by saving old theatre lights preserving them, rewiring them and turning them into beautiful feature lights for your home.
Theatre lights come in many different shapes, sizes and styles depending on their intended use. From large flood lights which were to wash the stage with coloured light to aerodynamic spotlights fitted with various types of lenses from plain convex lenses which were to produce a narrow beam of concentrated light perfect for lighting individual performers or even shining a beam of light onto a mirror ball. To beautiful Fresnel lenses which produce a soft edged circle of light.
At Stage Left Lux we like to keep the integrity of the theatre lights that we restore, we will rewire using authentic vintage style braided cable, we will also keep the original paint work and colours.
There were two major players in the British theatre lighting industry; Strand Lighting Company founded in 1914 in London and FWJ Furse Lighting Company based on Nottingham, now owned by CCT lighting
Both of these companies had a huge range of iconic designs and like all good rivals challenged each other to do big and better things, and producing their own versions - such as the spot light model Strand Patt 23 and Furse's version the Furse model SPR profile spotlight.
Strand Patt23
Furse model SPR
We told you they looked similar!!
The designer of the Strand Patt23 - was Morgan McLeod he originally designed aeroplanes hence the beautiful aerodynamic curved body of the theatre lantern.
