But, rest assured, I did make reference to the age of the piano and the fact that we wanted something that was in the vein of "Pretty Baby", burlesque/cat-house/Victorian style. I found a lamp that had the correct height - it had to be around 6.5-7" tall with the harp to give enough clearance to the shade, when we found it, to stand clear of the top of the piano by at least a foot. Otherwise, the lamp would not cast enough light over the keyboard to make it worthwhile. And lighting the candles in the piano candle holders is not something you want to do every day - there are already more than enough burn marks on the key cover for my taste.
Just to remind you what we were looking for...
Well sorta. We wanted it big, we wanted it Victorian, and we wanted it GOOD.
And we looked all over for it. Antique stores, junk shops, you name it - greater Houston area (and beyond, wherever we happened to be) the lamp shade became a Quest Item. If you know me - and Victoria, a well - a Quest Item is not taken lightly...
We found several that were close, but not quite. Not big enough, wrong shape, not tassel enough, too expensive (a lot of those), you name it.
We finally went online to see what could be found... While we really wanted vintage (a.k.a old), but it was becoming clear that anything old was not in good shape or couldn't be verified...
We finally found a shop, via eBay, that had hand-made shades. And they were gorgeous, but not cheap - especially in the size we wanted. But, after having done due diligence and given up on a miracle find, we had come to the conclusion that we'd have to increase the budget to find what we were looking for.
So we did.
We ordered it about a month ago. This past Wednesday, it arrived... And it was everything we had hoped for. Check it out (I had to reassemble the piano, it was in the middle of a tuning session) to take these pictures.
I did actually light the candles (briefly) to get the total effect for these pictures... They stayed that way for about five minutes and then got blown out...
We're not exactly happy with the lamp itself at this point (although it's the right height, it's really too skinny for that shade), so we have a new Quest Item - either a "fuller" lamp that has the right height, or some "stuff" that we can adorn the lamp pole with to make it look fuller. Personally, I'm betting on the latter, since I have seen very few lamps of that height at all. But we'll see. We love Quest Items.
And finally, if you're interested in where we got the shade, check out http://www.plainjaneshop.com/ and give a special nod to Amy - she made our shade!
Next post, I promise, the tuning - I'm already two weeks into it.
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