Still More Breyer Lamps: The Colorful Glen-Tek Lamps

One of the first Breyer lamps my mom and I found in the early days of our haunting antique stores and flea markets in the 1990s was a Glen-Tek Silky Sullivan lamp. As the resident horse racing fan in the house, it ended up on my dresser all through my middle and high school years. (It's still there in fact. One of these days, I need to bring it back to Chicago with me.)

Over the years, we found several more Glen-Tek lamps---a couple more Silky Sullivans and a mahogany Proud Arabian Foal. These two seem to be the most common lamps produced by the company. 

(The shade was borrowed from a 
Dunning lamp. It's not original.)

As you can see, the Glen-Tek lamps have distinct bases---a light colored top, contrasting color around the beveled edge, and little round feet on the underside at the corners. Many of them have a small accessory decorating the base like a fence, water pump, or drum. 

Both the Silky Sullivan and mahogany Proud Arabian Foal lamps can be found for sale on sites like eBay pretty regularly. That said, there are at least six more Glen-Tek lamps I'm aware of, but they all seem to be quite a bit harder to find. I can only assume they weren't made as long as the aforementioned Silky Sullivan and mahogany Proud Arabian Foal lamps. 
 
The first of these is another Proud Arabian Foal lamp, but featuring a dapple grey foal instead of a mahogany foal. They too have the little fence panel on the base.

Photo by Christina Dils

Occasionally, some lamps have Swaps instead of Silky Sullivan. He faces in the opposite direction and also has a fence.

Photo ganked from Facebook

One of the cutest lamps Glen-Tek offered is this palomino Family Arabian Foal with a little red water pump and bucket. The edge of the base is painted white, and the lamp pole and cord are also white to match.

Photo by Christina Dils

But I think my favorite Glen-Tek creation is this classic Lipizzaner lamp with the little drum accessory. I was delighted to find one on eBay earlier this year, and while it was pricier than I would have liked, I justified it as a birthday present to myself. (I feel like that was quite solid logic.) Like the Family Arabian Foal lamp, this one also has a white trimmed base, lamp pole, and cord.

This lamp with a Classic Arabian Stallion and Foal is the only Glen-Tek lamp I have seen with two models on the base. 

This bay Rearing Stallion lamp looks fairly similar to a Dunning lamp, but like the other Glen-Tek lamps, it has round feet under the base helping to distinguish it.

Photo by Christina Dils

As you can see from the photos below, the feet on the bottom of the bases varied a bit. Some are quite round while others are sort of compressed. They all have a lamp cord that emerges from the underside.

Photo by Christina Dils

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out much of anything about the Glen-Tek Scientific company other than it was located in Scottsdale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. Breyer historian and author Nancy Young related in her Breyer Molds and Models books that Peter Stone told her the company was co-owned by Rudy Schorsch who was later involved in the mail order company Horses International. (They offered a handful of Breyer special runs in the 1980s.) As you can see on the stickers on the lamp bases in the photos above, the only address given for Glen-Tek was a PO box, so I was unable to search for any company property records. Rudy himself is also an enigma. He apparently passed away in June 1989 at the age of 58, but I couldn't find an obituary for him. There are no references to the company in local newspapers either. I am hoping to look through my stash of Western Horseman magazines when I visit my family in December in case Glen-Tek advertised in the classifieds, but I'm not sure how many magazines I have from the later 1970s. (It should be noted that the Arizona Glen-Tek Scientific lamp company was not related to Glentek, the southern California servo motor and drive company.)

So that said, while we don't know the specifics of the Glen-Tek Scientific company, their products give us some good clues about when their Breyer lamps were made. Based on which models were used and how they are painted, it appears the Glen-Tek lamps were probably made from the mid-1970s until the early 1980s. Swaps and Silky Sullivan were not released until 1975, and the Lipizzaner debuted in 1976, so that gives us a pretty solid starting time frame. The Proud Arabian and Family Arabian Foals were available earlier, but the painting style of the foals on the lamps I've seen appears to be later 1970s in my opinion. I've only seen one example of the Rearing Stallion lamp, and it looks like a very late 1970s or early 1980s piece to me.

The Classic Arabian Stallion and Foal lamp likely dates from about 1979 to 1981 which probably gives us an approximate end date for the Glen-Tek lamps. The Classic Arabian Stallion was shown with no star and tan hooves only in those years in Breyer's catalogs, and the palomino Classic Arabian Foal was last available in 1982. Given that no lamps have turned up with models made outside of about 1975-1981/1982, I suspect that accounts for the years of production pretty accurately. 

If anyone reading this knows more about the Glen-Tek Scientific company or has a Glen-Tek lamp not shown here, please feel free to comment or send me a photo at mumtazmahal (at) gmail (dot) com

Thanks for reading!

More Breyer Lamps: the Griffin Lamp Manufacturing Company

I plan to write a couple more posts on Breyer lamps which I think will wrap up the subject pretty well (barring new primary source discoveries, of course), but that said, these posts will unfortunately be a bit light on specifics. Unlike Dunning Industries, these other lamp companies apparently don't seem to have inspired write ups in their local newspapers. 

The Griffin Lamp Company (or sometimes the Griffin Lamp Manufacturing Company) of Springfield, Massachusetts, is one such company. (Not to be confused with the Griffin Lamp Company of Hamilton, Ohio, which did not make Breyer lamps.) Griffin lamps featuring Breyers are a bit on the scarce side, and as best I can tell, they were likely made sometime around the late 1960s or the early 1970s. The Western Prancer lamps seem to pop up more often than lamps featuring other Breyer molds. The Western Prancer lamps came in buckskin, palomino, smoke, bay, and appaloosa. 

The only other example I have a photo of at the moment is this buckskin lamp that Andrea Gurdon showed in her collectors class at BreyerFest 2023. There's a larger photo on her blog sans saddle. I was interested to note that the Prancer on her lamp was mounted facing in the opposite direction as mine.

Only sparse documentation exists for these lamps, chiefly two advertisements in Western Horseman magazine---one from June 1970 (below, left) and the other from November 1971 (below, right). They are much the same other than the later ad includes the smoke colorway. 

I only know of two other styles of Griffin lamps at the moment, this intriguing sorrel Five-Gaiter on a plastic base just like the Western Prancers owned by Linda Pope...

And this lovely star-faced bay Stretch Morgan on a wooden base owned by Sande Schneider. Interestingly, the Griffin name is stamped on the underside of this base. 

All of the models found on Griffin lamps so far were available from Breyer by the mid-1960s and most were discontinued at some point in the early 1970s. The black and white pinto Western Prancer is the only early colorway for that mold not found on these lamps, and as it was discontinued in 1966, that may mean that none of Griffin's horse lamps were available until 1967 or later. I don't know if the Morgans on wood bases constitute earlier lamps than the ones with plastic bases or perhaps simply a more expensive or more formal option.

If anyone reading this has come across other Griffin lamps, including Western Prancers in other colors, please feel free to email pictures to me at mumtazmahal (at) gmail (dot) com, and I'll update this post.  

In trying to track down the history of the Griffin Lamp Company, all I've been able to find is a smattering of classifieds ads, a brief reference to employment in a wedding announcement, and an obituary, and unfortunately, that's pretty much it. With what little information that provides, here's what I've been able to piece together. 

The Griffin Lamp (Manufacturing) Company was founded by Edward J. Griffin who was born around 1910. Griffin served in the Army in World War II and started the business in his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts, sometime after he returned home from the war. [1] Unfortunately, I haven't found anything to indicate exactly when he started the business, but based on a September 1960 real estate ad for the building the lamp company later occupied [2], I suspect it was in late 1960 or 1961. The earliest reference for the company I have found is a 1961 wedding announcement that mentioned that the future bride worked for the Griffin Lamp Company, so that seems to fit. [3] There are a smattering of classified ads in 1962 in particular and then again later in the 1960s looking for new lamp shade binding machine operators, but otherwise, I haven't found anything of interest until the 1970 and 1971 Western Horseman ads pictured above. 

In August 1973, Griffin published a classified ad that referenced horse lamps as part of their first annual sale. They were apparently on sale from $25 (approximately $189 in 2026) marked down to $9 ($68 in 2026). This matches the prices from the Western Horseman ads, but it's impossible to say which horse lamps this ad referred to. 

The Morning Union, Springfield, MA, August, 6, 1973, pg. 25

Later classifieds ads in 1975 and 1976 only mentioned novelty lamps from the company, not specifically horse lamps. The last such ad I can find for the company dates to August 1976. By October of 1979, the building that once housed the Griffin Lamp Company was being assessed for an electroplating business [4], and in May of 1982, the building itself was once again listed for sale. [5] The company founder, Edward Griffin, passed away in February 1983. [6]

Based on what I've gleaned from the newspapers, my best guess is that the Griffin Lamp Company was in business from about 1961-1976 or perhaps a few years more. And given the scarcity of the horse lamps, I suspect they may only have been available from about 1970-1973, and it seems like they may not have made a lot of them. 

I hope you've enjoyed this post! I'll be tackling Glen-Tek lamps next. Thanks for reading!

Sources:

1) The Morning Union, Springfield, MA, February 17, 1983, pg 31

2) The Republican, Springfield, MA, September 30, 1960, pg 34

3) The Republican, Springfield, MA, December 5, 1961, pg 22

4) The Republican, Springfield, MA, October 5, 1979, pg 32

5) The Morning Union, Springfield, MA, May 18, 1982, pg 33

6) The Morning Union, Springfield, MA, February 17, 1983, pg 31