About Us
Ok! So what about us?
We are two ordinary brothers living in Finland, and
yes, we do have electricity here in Finland. That isn´t the reason why we collect kerosene lamps and stoves.Actually it was more or less a coincidence that this hobby got a start.
Anders
The first kerosene lamp that I got, was
a Aladdin nr. 23. I found it under a summer house, and asked
if I could buy it. As the chimney was broken and some parts where
missing, the owner said that I could have it for free. This was
sometimes about 1987 or 1988.
At this time I still wasn´t collecting lanterns, but used
the Aladdin every summer.In the summer of year 2000 I built a gazebo in the garden,
you know, just a place to enter in case of rain, or if the wind was
too cold. I started to fancy about hanging the Aladdin from the
ceiling, so that I could use the place even when it got darker in the evenings.But then I found a "Tower" brand pressure lantern in a store,
and it was pretty cheap so I bought it. It was a 350 c.p. model,
so it was a little too bright, and again I was thinking about the
Aladdin.I started to look for something else to put into the gazebo, and found another Aladdin, not even used once, but again the chimney was broken.
Well, the chimney was a piece of cake (though a pretty expensive cake), but as the lamp was a table model I needed a shade of some kind and started looking for one.Now I found a "Hasag" brand pressure lantern in a second hand store and this bargain was the reason that I decided to start collecting
kerosene lamps, and in special, pressure lanterns.Per-Henrik
The first time I got in touch with pressure lanterns was in -91 in the army. We didn't get to use the lanterns very much, we were only taught how to light them. I don't remember the brand, but afterwards when I tried to describe these strange lanterns to Anders I told him that they were named "Petrolyt" or something like that. Two things I remember for sure: we used kerosene for fuel, and lit them using the rapid preheater. So considering the name that I remembered and the other facts it might have been a Petromax or a Petrolite.
In August -99 I saw similar looking lanterns in a local store. I considered buying one to use in the Venezian evening (a tribute for the summer that has been), but came to the conclusion that it was to expensive since I didn't really have any place to use it the rest of the year. But I told Anders about it and almost exactly one year afterwards he bought one and we lit it for the first time at the summer house on the Venezian evening. This was the beginning of our new hobby.
Shortly after this, Anders found his first Hasag no. 42, and the day after that I found my Petromax 822 (the one pictured on the first page). Oboy, it was a beauty. But as with almost every used lantern that we have found, even the Petromax glass was broken, and we had to get a new one.
Fortunately there is a store in our city, that knows where to get the standard glass chimneys that the most common kerosene lamps uses.After that we have looked and searched for lanterns whenever
we have had the opportunity.We have also found a couple of kerosene stoves, and as
they are working with the same principle as the pressure lanterns, we have started collecting them too. In fact, we are now keeping our eyes open for anything that burns kerosene..There are lanterns available on the market, if You only are prepared to pay for them, but our rule is "the cheaper the better", and this means that the cheaper we can get a lamp or a stove, the better deal we have made. In the end, the deal often turns out to be very expensive...