Q: Can you tell us what this was used for? It has been part of my brother's and my lives for at least 65 years. As children, we thought it looked rather evil. The bowl is metal but not magnetic like the black areas, which I assume are cast iron. The top collar is removable, the finials unscrew, and the legs are attached with a nut on the inside. The top is open and the bottom has open grates. The bottom of the base is marked "B & H."
A: It looks like the bottom to a lamp-oil heater made by Bradley & Hubbard of Meriden, Conn. Your heater may have included a glass chimney and a metal chimney or one or the other. Lamp heaters were made by several lamp manufacturers in the late 1800s and were used in rooms that didn't have larger heating stoves. They could be moved from bedroom to bath, nursery, or library and were meant to be decorative as well as practical.
