Lava Lite – The Decorator Lite of a Million Moving Shapes…
Now, enter a new world of excitement and beauty with the mysteriously provocative Lava Lite… America’s newest and most glamorous decorative lite. Continuously moving, ever-changing, it’s the action lite that captivates everyone with it’s hypnotic gyrations. Brilliantly styled, color keyed to compliment any decor. Lava Lite offers unlimited decorative possibilities whenever and wherever it is used.
A Blast from the Past
Trippy huh? I remember the Lava Lite we had as a kid. The lamp was made of a silver metal with a black cap and had glowing greenish “lava” inside that grew and shrank, contorted and undulated. I thought that lamp was so cool!
It seemed like Mom always had that lamp on, and it was mesmerizing to watch.
When I was newly married, one of the first items I bought was a new Lava Lite for our home – and I also always had it turned on. We still have a Lava Lamp in our house, and our kids have grown up enjoying it too.
The History
Back in 1963, Edward Craven Walker invented the first Lava Lite.
The Lava Lite had a special colored wax glob inside the glass that was surrounded with clear liquid. When you turned on the lamp in the base, the lamp heated up the wax, changing the density and viscosity of the wax. This warming caused the wax to rise through the surrounding liquid. When the wax cooled, it lost its buoyancy, and fell back to the bottom of the glass shape, and the cycle repeated. The wax looked like pahoehoe lava – which is how the lamp got it’s name.
There were several variations of the Lava Lite style, as shown in this vintage magazine ad:
Lava Lite’s were popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and then resurfaced again in the 1990s. The Lava Lite is also known as a Lava Lamp, and they are still being made today. Here are a few of the current models available:
Do you have a lava lamp in your home? Share in a comment below!
Available in Our Vintage Shop:
