{Thrift Store Temptations} A Bicentennial Lamp

My favorite thing about thrift store shopping is when you stumble across that thing you've never seen before and can't quite believe exists. Like this lamp. 

I don't understand. At all. But there's a part of me that can almost picture the room this thing would be at home in. 

I know about the bicentennial, but that doesn't explain why anyone would feel the need to print the Declaration of Independence on a lampshade. Or the combination of wood and fake hurricane lamps. I'm usually a fan of electrified hurricane lamps, but not this particular example.

And then there were these --

I can't tell you how much I wanted these. When Hubby and I were first married, we had a pair of spectacular old lamps that I think his sister had given him. They were huge and spectacularly ugly and I absolutely loved them - maybe more in hindsight. Imagine the pebbled glass globes from this pair, in red and two feet across! They broke when we were moving, which may or may not have been an accident. Or we made the decision to get rid of them. All I know is that we used to have them -- and the ugly but comfy couch that went with them -- and now we don't.

As much as I love the memory of those lamps, these are better! I've never seen anything like them and, unlike the lamp with the Declaration of Independence on the shade, I would love to have these in my house. I walked around the store three times convincing myself that there's no place in the house to display them and that they'd need to be rewired and that someone else would come along who would love them just as much as I do. Their five  dollar price tag made it hard.