The two lamps were beyond u-g-l-y.
And you couldn’t miss them there, sitting high on a chest among the furniture in a back room at one of my favorite auction houses. They looked to be about 2 feet tall, with royal blue and clear glass balls and crystals, in the cascading shape of a tower.
Did I say they were ugly and gaudy?
I like the color blue. I even like some variations of royal blue (the colors of my sorority from college were royal blue and gold – that, however, was a better combination).
I was convinced that nobody – nobody – would buy these lamps. I was surprised that anyone had not only made them but purchased them. I assumed they were originally bought to match some living room or bedroom décor, maybe back in the 1950s, because they had a mid-century look.
Back then, they were probably the bomb. But now they stood out like an anachronism, dinosaurs from a time when they were probably oohed and aahed over.
I went looking for other ugly lamps on the web, and found that ugly lamp contests have become a national pastime.
Each year, the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville has an Ugly Lamp Contest and gets hundreds of entries. The lamps have to be “born ugly or made ugly.” Here’s a local TV telecast of some of the entries.
Findgreatstuff.com, an antiques site, has its own ugly lamp contest.
Here’s an ugly lamp cartoon.
More ugly lamps from the betterafter.com blog
An action figure lamp from London sculptor Ryan McElhinney. A commenter on another site put it in the “so ugly its awesome” category. Is it ugly, though? We’ve all come across an ugly something that was actually pretty. I actually like it.
That, however, was not the case for the lamps at auction. I wasn’t around when the lamps sold, so I’m not sure how much they went for (free would’ve been my choice). I was around when the buyer took them away. She was one of the auction house’s regulars, a woman who owns an antiques shop. She normally buys jewelry, Murano glass, furs and other neat little items. These lamps seemed out of her element.
So I asked why she bought them. Said she’ll use them for a window display.
Not a bad idea. They will certainly stop the curious walking past the window and may even draw them into her shop.
