Provenancing oil lamps

 Oil lamps were a feature of the Victorian age.

Before electricity they were used almost universally as a source of light, especially once cheap kersosene became available as a lamp fuel, which  displaced whale oil, which was comparatively expensive. (Gas lighting was initially confined to offices and factories as early gas lights were not actually that bright, and being fixed in position could not be easily moved round the house or repositioned to provide better light for reading, sewing, or other domestic tasks.)

At their simplest oil lamps consist of three components, a reservoir, a burner, and a glass funnel to protect the flame.

When you examine them, quite often the only manufacturer's name you see is on the brass burner unit, as in this example from Plume and Attwood in America

And I made the not unreasonable assumption that they had manufactured the lamp. And then I came across this example stamped 'Kosmos Brenner'

It turns out that 'Kosmos Brenner' is not a manufacturer but a type of burner made by Wild and Wessel in Berlin in the 1860s that allowed the use of a flat woven wick.

This design was copied by a number of other manufacturers, some of whom also named their burners 'Kosmos Brenner'.

So, long story short, I'd been assuming that the name on the burner was that of the lamp manufacturer, and in some cases, that's true, such as is the case of the brass oil lamps made by Sherwood's in Birmingham.

But there were always fewer burner manufacturers than oil lamp makers - even Sherwood's supplied burners to other manufacturers - so unless there is a maker's trademark elsewhere on the lamp we cannot safely use the trademark on the burner as an indicator of who manufactured the lamp and where, at best it's an indicator of where the burner came from.

By analogy, it's a bit like my looking at my no name chain store desk lamp and deciding it was made by Osram, as that's who made the lamp globe ...