Long associated with the hippie era of the 60's and 70's and a staple of college dormitories and teenagers bedrooms, lava lamps are enjoying a renewed interest thanks to the boom in retro nostalgia.
Not bad for an accessory of simple yet brilliant design.
It took a decade of tinkering for British engineer Edward Craven Walker to perfect his bizarre waxy concoction encased in a vessel of colored liquid which, when heated at it's base by a light bulb would rise in oozing globs towards the top, cool off, and submerge to start the cycle again. It was useless, really, but the effect was strangly hypnotic.
In 1963, Craven launched his company, Cresworth, and began marketing his creation under the name Astro Light.
Over the next couple years Craven's invention achieved much success. It wasn't until 1965, however, when American entrepreneurs Adolhp Werthimer and Hy Spector saw the lamp on exhibit at a German trade show that the quirky object's popularity really took off.
Wertheimer and Spector aquired the rights to produce the lamps in North America and set up a facility in Chicago to manufacture them under the new moniker Lava Motion Lamps.
The Lava Lite became an immeadiate hit with the counterculture set in the United States, which also launched a new wave of excitement in Europe as well. When sales began to dwindle in the 1980's, Walker sold the rights to the Astro Light to the Mathmos Manufacturing Company, which still produces lamps for markets outside the U.S.
Various models of lamps have been produced over the years, although the familure tapered globe version, known as "The Century", remains as popular today as it was over 30 years ago.
Other takes on the classic form, most of which have been retired, include "The Consort", described in the company's own 1970's catalog as being designed with a "Masculine flavor...perfect for the study or den, so right for the executive suite." and "The Enchantress" which came with a plastic planter "Blooming with delicate (plastic) foliage and exquisite floral greenery."
And just what is that goo inside the lamp made of, anyway? It's a closely guarded traade secret. However, its widely regarded to be a specially compounded wax simular to paraffin.
The actual making of the stuff is an exacting process, with the water and wax formula composed of 11 ingredients blended together in large tanks with technicians closely monitoring the exact gravity of the mixture to the ten-thousandth to ensure the proper interaction of all the components and thus prevent them from separating once they are combined together inside the globe.
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