The Montgomery Ward Davy Crockett and Lucky Ranger Lamps

Since I am on a Breyer lamp blogging kick, and I'm sort of covering the subject in chronological order, that brings us to the mid-1950s and a pair of lamps sold through the Montgomery Ward catalog. In 1955, the Davy Crockett craze was at its peak thanks to a series of movies, popular comics, and especially a Disney TV miniseries that aired in 1954 and 1955 starring Fess Parker in the titular role. Anything and everything that could be licensed with the Davy Crockett name---from coon skin caps to dolls to clothes to bicycles---was made and sold (more on this in an upcoming post). Breyer got in on the craze quickly, and by August of 1955 had announced their new Davy Crockett and horse model in Toys and Novelties. 

For Christmas that year, the Montgomery Ward catalog offered Breyer's Davy Crockett set on a table lamp. The base was molded plaster meant to resemble a desert scene complete with green cacti. The shade featured a silhouette of the horse and rider pair in an illustrated desert scene. Examples have been found with Davy on a plum brown Fury Prancer as well as on a palomino model. 

Interestingly, the shades on all of the examples I've seen are printed in reverse compared to what is shown in the catalog. They vary in color---some are lighter, some are darker, some have less contrast between the background and the design. I've seen a fairly even distribution of black and palomino Prancers on these lamps. My sister and I are lucky enough to have found a couple of odd variations as well. Two of our palominos are full basecoat chalkies, and one of our plum brown examples managed to escape the factory with no white markings.

A typical palomino example

A close up of a plum brown example

Wards also published a "Holiday Sale" catalog in 1955 which offered another Fury Prancer lamp, this one with a palomino horse, a plain shade, and Lucky Ranger as the rider. It is possible these lamps shipped with Cowboys as well since the molds are identical and the color scheme is similar, but the handful that I have seen that were found in the wild, including my own, came with Lucky Ranger.

Many thanks to Robin Roberts for this ad!

I lucked into the set below while out and about in Chicago some years ago. I was absolutely delighted that it still had the original shade, and Lucky Ranger still had one of his guns. 

In my experience, the Lucky Ranger lamps seem to be a bit less common than the Davy Crockett lamps. But given the magnitude of the Davy Crockett craze, I imagine Montgomery Ward got far more orders for Davy than for a generic cowboy. That said, these lamps with both riders do turn up periodically, but the plaster bases and the lamp shades are fragile, so finding them in good condition can be a real challenge. As far as I know, neither of these lamps were offered beyond 1955.

As I mentioned in my previous post about Dunning lamps, there has been hobby speculation for years that these lamps were Dunning products. However, now that we know Dunning didn't start his business until 1964, we know that can't possibly be the case. So while we do know when these lamps were made, we still don't know who made them. And unfortunately, as of this writing, I don't yet have an answer.

Both Breyer and Montgomery Ward were Chicago companies, so if I had to guess, I would bet that whoever made the lamp components was probably also a Chicago company. None of the six plaster base lamps in our collection have markings on the bases that I'm aware of, and I don't know of any other collectors who have found examples with stickers or hang tags or the like. If anyone reading this has an example of these lamps with some sort of provenance about the maker, I would love to know!