Lamp Posts - review

Outdoor lamposts 

Lamp posts were conceived for streets but are increasingly found in gardens. The reasons for this are:

• a lamp in a high position illuminates a larger area than a low level light
• as people become richer than can afford to lighting for outdoor as well as indoor use
• many people have drives in gardens, which benefit from lanterns on posts
• antique lamp posts, and reproductions of antique lamp posts, have become available. People see a garden is a the obvious place for Victorian style lighting..

A vast number of modern designs for lanterns and posts is available. But their associations are with public streets and so one rarely sees them in gardens. The lamp posts currently used in gardens tend to be:

• antique lamp posts and lanterns (usually converted from oil or gas to electricity)
• specially design garden lights, usually on medium-hight posts

This situation reminds one of Marshall McLuhan's comment that a medium (eg black and white photography) becomes an art form only when has been superseded by another medium.