The Water Carrier
An Italian alabaster figural lamp from the 1920s
This lamp was carved in Volterra, a hill town in Tuscany that has worked alabaster since Roman times. Alabaster is a soft, translucent stone, and when electric light arrived, Italian workshops discovered it glowed beautifully with a bulb behind it. Lamps like this were shipped by the thousands to American parlors in the 1920s.
The figure is a young woman carrying water, in the Middle Eastern peasant dress that was popular in art at the time. Look closely and you'll see she was carved from a warm honey-colored stone and then tinted by hand to bring out her face and hair. The column and shades are white alabaster, and the base is veined marble.
The whole thing was carved by hand, piece by piece, and fitted together. Underneath, in pencil-thin script, it still reads "Made in Italy" with the workshop's pattern number.