press Enter to searchShowing all results:No products found.
Vintage Industrial Lighting
Vintage lighting runs through our veins – for us, it’s where it all began.
Lighting with history
Trainspotters headed up the new vintage aesthetic of the early 2000s, bringing salvaged industrial to the mainstream with carefully sourced and expertly restored items at fair prices. Our expertise in finding large quantities of vintage industrial items meant the market was no longer niched to trade experts and antiques dealers, but available to anyone with an eye for the trend.
Popular culture influences
Pre-noughties lighting was in a nutshell, completely uninspiring! Buying ‘vintage’ lights meant lumping for poor quality cost-driven reproductions or out-dated Victoriana. The Cheers bar had lost its appeal and instead the red stone New York loft apartments of Friends and Sex In The City were the new go-to looks.
It was an exciting era and no location was out of bounds – vintage industrial lighting came from factories, churches and chapels, institutions, asylums and municipal streetscapes – all abandoned in favour of regeneration; yet all the time it was clear this was not a fly by night trend, each piece breathed integrity and they were exactly what people had been longing for.
A learning curve
The restoration process is a labour of love. Sourcing and buying (or as it’s otherwise referred to ‘reclaiming’) vintage lights is a skill but the refurbishment process to bring items back to their former glory is quite another story. It has taken years of trial and error to finely hone the talents that will ensure a vintage light looks both amazing and is inherently safe for the current market.
Lighting for life
Many resources are committed to perfecting the necessary techniques to provide top end vintage industrial lights. Sometimes there is an extra buzz of doing this for a rare or possible one-off item which is good enough to be lovingly restored and passed on to a new generation.
And so, the love affair with vintage industrial lighting continues.
New Mills rose like a phoenix from the ashes from one of the many old and dilapidated cloth mills that line the five valleys area in the South Cotswolds. Much like salvaged lighting (where our story all began) we have lovingly restored the Mill over the years to incorporate our warehouse, showroom and offices. This …
It’s 9am on a Thursday morning and a laden truck hot from the Czech republic awaits unloading. The Trainspotters workers start offloading and stacking the cargo of hundreds of salvaged industrial lights into ordered batches in the mill.
Have you ever walked into a restaurant and experienced a lovely warm feeling, something in the atmosphere and yet you can’t quite define what makes it so special? There’s no doubt in that initial moment you experienced a pretty strong sensory assault – a heady combination of smells and sounds, but of course what you …
Vintage Industrial Lighting
Vintage lighting runs through our veins – for us, it’s where it all began.
Lighting with history
Trainspotters headed up the new vintage aesthetic of the early 2000s, bringing salvaged industrial to the mainstream with carefully sourced and expertly restored items at fair prices. Our expertise in finding large quantities of vintage industrial items meant the market was no longer niched to trade experts and antiques dealers, but available to anyone with an eye for the trend.
Popular culture influences
Pre-noughties lighting was in a nutshell, completely uninspiring! Buying ‘vintage’ lights meant lumping for poor quality cost-driven reproductions or out-dated Victoriana. The Cheers bar had lost its appeal and instead the red stone New York loft apartments of Friends and Sex In The City were the new go-to looks.
It was an exciting era and no location was out of bounds – vintage industrial lighting came from factories, churches and chapels, institutions, asylums and municipal streetscapes – all abandoned in favour of regeneration; yet all the time it was clear this was not a fly by night trend, each piece breathed integrity and they were exactly what people had been longing for.
A learning curve
The restoration process is a labour of love. Sourcing and buying (or as it’s otherwise referred to ‘reclaiming’) vintage lights is a skill but the refurbishment process to bring items back to their former glory is quite another story. It has taken years of trial and error to finely hone the talents that will ensure a vintage light looks both amazing and is inherently safe for the current market.
Lighting for life
Many resources are committed to perfecting the necessary techniques to provide top end vintage industrial lights. Sometimes there is an extra buzz of doing this for a rare or possible one-off item which is good enough to be lovingly restored and passed on to a new generation.
And so, the love affair with vintage industrial lighting continues.
Related Posts
Lighting For Life
New Mills rose like a phoenix from the ashes from one of the many old and dilapidated cloth mills that line the five valleys area in the South Cotswolds. Much like salvaged lighting (where our story all began) we have lovingly restored the Mill over the years to incorporate our warehouse, showroom and offices. This …
Trainspotters in the New York Times
Check out this article on our Walk/Don’t Walk signs in today’s New York Times: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/walk-dont-walk-open-your-wa… Michael Grynbaum writes eloquently about these now extinct New York city icons, although seems in our opinion a little too
A truck arrives from the East…
It’s 9am on a Thursday morning and a laden truck hot from the Czech republic awaits unloading. The Trainspotters workers start offloading and stacking the cargo of hundreds of salvaged industrial lights into ordered batches in the mill.
The Subconscious Power of Lighting
Have you ever walked into a restaurant and experienced a lovely warm feeling, something in the atmosphere and yet you can’t quite define what makes it so special? There’s no doubt in that initial moment you experienced a pretty strong sensory assault – a heady combination of smells and sounds, but of course what you …