Lamp Base 1935 - 1942

Willoughby Ions created this lamp base out of watercolor and graphite on paper. Ions was born in 1855, a time of British Imperial expansion, and he lived to see the turn of the 20th century and its avant-garde styles. The lamp has an orientalist style, with a pink background and a painting of cranes with reeds. How might this decorative object reflect the colonialist practices of the time, through which Western artists appropriated and commodified imagery from the East? The object could romanticize the East as exotic and different, or even reflect the British Empire's appropriation of culture for trade. Although Ions himself was a product of his time, do you think he could have intended to challenge the status quo? What is your relationship to the lamp?