obscurophile.

I stumbled across these lamps when some friends forced me to take one home from a fundraising auction a couple years ago. At first, the lamp seemed really ridiculous, but it really ended up growing on me. So, naturally I poked around and tried to find some more information about it, but was not able to find anything on the web. All of the lamps carry a label on the back that says "Apsit Bros. of Calif." and a year.

I was, however, able to find some for sale on eBay, and ended up getting sucked into purchasing more... but I had to stop because my house is small and I have no room for more!

The name "Apsit" is very frequently misspelled as "Aspit". These lamps are all plaster cast, and are hand painted. I've learned a lot from people emailing me about their own lamps, and it sounds like they were sold unpainted, and people would buy them, paint them themselves and then sell them. Thanks for all of your emails!

The oldest lamp I've found so far is from 1974, and the newest from 1987. At least, that's what they say on the back of each lamp. You can see some of the dates in the pictures of the lamps.

It's a complete mystery how much these lamps are worth. Since they're all painted by different people, they vary widely in quality. I've seen them up on eBay selling for anywhere from $10 to a couple hundred. I think it's all just in the luck of finding the right buyer!

Most of the lamps share either a frontier or nautical theme, although there are a couple of outliers. I have no idea how many of each lamp were made, or how many different lamps are in existence. I have seen several duplicates of lamps now, and it's interesting to see how they were painted differently.

This is pretty much all I know about the lamps, if you have any other information or own one yourself, please email me, I'm interested to learn more! I'd like to post visitor comments on this site, so if you email and you'd prefer not to have your message posted here, let me know.