Category: Cool old stuff

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Vintage Pineapple Lamp

This may look like a group of grapes, but it is not. It’s a pineapple, a Vintage Pineapple Lamp. Check out eBay if you don’t believe me. I spied this at a thrift store more than a year ago, but I kept my powder dry owing to the $49 price tag. That’s a bit too steep for me for a purely kitsch item. However, I never forgot it, and when one appeared in my eBay feed for $23 about a month before my birthday, I bought it. (Full disclosure: the item cost more than $10 to ship.)

It’s really heavy with a metal base made to look like wood just like the stickers that covered the paneling on a mid-80s Ford Country Squire Wagon. The balls are lucite and strung seemingly by hand with wire around a metal column. The top is plastic and resembles an artificial plant. I rewired it and included a new LED bulb so as not to heat the lucite and damage it. It glows ever so slightly and looks best at night. Lowe’s sells colored LED bulbs around Christmas time, so I may switch it out to a green bulb, which will hide it better amid the cluster of balls.

This version is green and blue, but it also comes in yellow and green, which, frankly, would make it look more like a pineapple and less like grapes. Your taste may vary, but I liked the blue best.

Vintage Pineapple Lamp

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Mr Nutto’s Chair

This is Mr. Nutto’s Chair. It’s a Belter Chair from the late nineteenth century. It is rosewood with a needlepoint cushion that is not original. It was given to us by my father in law, Howe, who gave us the chair and the story several years ago.

Mr. Nutto was an elderly suitor to Vern, my husband Jeffy Guy’s grandmother, who was a widow for half her life. Vern’s first husband, a wealthy pharmacist, died when he was 40. Jeffy’s mom was 6 at the time. Her brother Rus was 10 and would soon get shipped off to the Milton Hershey School, a private school founded by Hershey Chocolate’s founder.

Vern remained a widow for the rest of her life, but later on, Mr. Nutto came calling. He wanted to marry Vern, but she refused. As the story goes, he died not long after the proposal. It’s unclear when he gave her the chair.

Had she agreed to his hand, he would have left her with a fortune. As it stands, he left her with this chair, which is now ours. It was half broken when we acquired it, and through wear, we fully broke it. I got this photo from the repair shop to indicate it is finished.

Finding someone to repair an antique, rosewood chair is no easy task. When I presented Jeffy Guy with the estimate, he said, “I like that chair, and it’s Mr. Nutto’s chair.”

Mr Nutto Chair - Belter Chair