Neat setup!

Beautiful. We (Australia) had the bakelite fittings under the STURDEE brand, also ELMACO and HPM. Clipsal came a little later but did have bakelite products that were good quality.

I have a large box of bakelite and porcelain fiitings that I have been collecting over the years. It's great stuff and is still available new if you go to the right place..

To me, there is nothing classier than a brass-based bulb in a bakelite pendant with braided pair cord - switched by a bakelite or brass switch. Kepp saving them Tony

yep got some sturdee and hpm type also a common on here from australia is ringrip. iam currently putting up walls and lining in my shed and will be installing these see other pics. as for saving these that is what i always will do i dont let a single one slip

Cool. Are you also into eerie effects with them ? (40W GLS in series with 1N4007 diode, stuff like that)

I am VERY surprised how english all these items look!!!

That Brown switch on the bottom right, I found one of them under my mams Floor boards when the Emersion heater was ripped out and central heating was put in.. Unfortuntely i ended up standing on it and smashing it... That would of been original to the house

The socket on the right top, in E27, was pretty common in 50's-70's construction Israeli homes too. It would be used in many places where you need a simplest lamp but not dangling on a wire

@Tony -RING GRIP - how could I have left that out!!

@Ash - I have a jar full of 1N4007's in the shed. Never tried that! DC or AC?

@Kev - Yes we probably stole the design from you guys in the first place! It won't happen any more because we now import everything from China thanks to our useless government. We also export copper and other resources then buy it back again in other products.

@Danny - I do stuff like that sometimes! Broke one of my 42W CFL's yesterday, held it too tight by the glass and it cracked and lost vacuum (which really sucks LOL). I don't cry over CFL's though.

@Ash - Many early Australian homes had very high ceilings, these hanging lights were everywhere and it wasn't unusual to have two or more meters of cloth braided wire up to a bakelite ceiling rose - in the last 15 years or so we have started to call them 'pendant' fittings. The older ones commonly had a glass or enamelled 'chinaman's hat' style light shade, or many decorative types that looked wonderful.

You connect the diode in series with the incandescent lamp (Live/Hot/Active to diode, diode to lamp, lamp to Neutral). All that to 240V AC. The diode will cause a pronounced 50Hz flicker in the light as well as take the light output down to 1/2 brightness. Good for "haunts" and stuff

Seems to work best with 40-60W lamps

Use only with mains power incandescents (or halogens however i dont know if it will have the flicker effect with them) - not 12V halogens on transformer, and nothing that uses a ballast



Here there are no roses in use. The most basic setup is when the wires are just coming out of a connection box right in there, or out of the end of the pipe

Later lights use a plastic cone that slips up to cover the hole, nothing more than that for the simple lights

Today many custom fixtures are available, the dangling lightbulb (or CFL) is no more a common thing. I have some of those in my home, to which i added paper shades (just a square out of 4 A4 pages, the lamp is a CFL). In my room there is a thing like this too except that its a 11W PL on magnetic ballast

The 2M of wire ? Impressive. Here the standard ceiling is 2.5M, in some new homes 2.7M. Anything that is not flat to the ceiling, you can reach while standing on the floor