Bit of a curio this fellow, and having bought it in a junk shop for a few pounds, it took us a while to work out what it actually was. So while we are not 100% sure, we are fairly certain that it’s an early dark room lamp ( circa 1900 ) which would have been used when developing early glass plate sides in the days before electricity. The ability to raise and lower the flaps and the wee hole in one of them which can be covered/uncovered led us to believe it was a signal lamp of some sort initially. While this is still a possibility, the darkroom lantern seems to be the best bet …… More information would be welcome. There’s a lovely connection with our mountain heritage here since we have dozens of old glass plate slides from the same era which may well have been developed using a lamp like this. We’ve made a print of one of them which you will see opposite.