Breaking news — You read it here in the blogosphere FIRST! As mid century, vintage and retro style continues to boom in popularity, there are more and more sources of all-new product reproductions. But many of us still love and prefer our “authentic vintage.” The team at Barn Light Electric wants to be able to serve both markets. So in addition to their reproduction lighting, today they launched a new website dedicated to selling authentic vintage lighting from the 20th century – cleaned up and rewired, of course. Stephanie, who is my contact at the company, explains:
Part of how we originally started Barn Light Electric was based around these lights. Our owners (Bryan and Donna) were always coming across old lights at flea markets or sales and Bryan liked restoring them as a hobby.
Bryan saw early on that these type of lights had the potential to be popular, so he sought out a manufacturer and began producing reproductions of these vintage styles (and more) – hence Barn Light Electric Company!
Once Barn Light Electric was launched and took off, everyone became more and more busy and we didn’t have much time (or space) to devote to the vintage ones until recently when we moved into our new office. We’ve always had a TON of old porcelain warehouse shades around the office – in fact, they were our inspiration to start producing our line of new porcelain lights too! It was a big group effort but we couldn’t be more pleased on how it came out! We’ll be adding new vintage items all the time so the stock will always be changing and growing.
We hope that Vintage Barn Lighting will grow to become everyone’s trusted source for these beautiful vintage pieces – they have the ability to fit into so many styles of homes. They come from all across the
country and each seems to carry it’s own bit of our early 20th century history. We have a blog started as well called VintageBarnLight.com – we update it weekly with bits of history, fun photos and new items. We’ll be able to write about more styles now that we have all of the cool gas station lights, milk glass and glass shade pendants too, so stay tuned!
Blog: http://www.vintagebarnlight.com/
Website: http://www.vintagebarnlighting.com/Let me know if you have any more questions, I’d be happy to answer them!
Stephanie
Thank you, Stephanie. The light are lovely — thanks to Bryan, Donna and the Barn Light Electric team for seeing the beauty an dkeeping these all from going to a landfill.
Disclosure: Barn Light Electric is currently an advertiser. This story is not part of the deal, though. I saw BLE’s tweet and jumped all over it — My goal: To be FIRST in the vintage/retro/space!
Pam, coming from the co-owner of Barn Light Electric, thank you so much for the opportunity to follow up on this comment. We have tried to the very best of our ability to resolve the issues with this customer, without success. It’s disappointing to see our name associated with such a note as we make sure to give only the best service possible to each and every one of our customers. We regret that we were not able to satisfy this particular one, but look forward to helping the thousands of happy and returning customers we have each year.
Buy from this company at your own risk! My wife and I ordered some lights from Barn Light late last year. The confirmation email said they would ship within 7 to 14 business days. Barn Light charged our credit card immediately (as opposed to charging the card when the items ship). Twenty business days passed and we had not received a shipping notice or anything from Barn Light explaining the delay. So we decided to cancel and go somewhere else (we could not wait around forever since the lights were for a renovation project). We sent a cancellation request through the website. Literally, within minutes of sending the cancellation, we received a shipping notice (a huge coincidence given that this is the first we had heard from Barn Light since ordering). Our cancellation request was sent at 1/10/11 at 11:19 (we have a confirmation email from the company). The shipping notice said the shipping date was 1/10/11 at 11:21 (we also have this email, too). Because the items had been shipped, we now would have to pay the return shipping costs to get our refund, which makes it not quite worth doing given that they also charged a 25% restocking fee at the time (the restocking fee also is unfair given that we cancelled because they did not ship in time per their own email, but this is not the main complaint with the company). My wife emailed various people at Barn Light and they said to call the general manager. I called the general manager. He listened to me and said he would call me back with a response. He never returned my call. I even called him again and left a message with the person who answered his phone requesting that he call me back. He never did. Regardless of what he thought about the merits of my issue, the fact that he refuses to return my call speaks volumes about this company and its business practices.
Hi David,
I’ve alerted Barn Light Electric about your issues and in fairness, asked if they would like to respond.
Hi Pam,
I’m driving myself insane looking for the manufacturer of the light that hung in the kitchen of Carrie and Big’s apartment in Sex and the City 2. It looks like a retractable UFO style hanging light-very Mid Century- just gorgeous. Yet, nowhere can I find anyone describing it or giving a clue where it came from. I hope you can help me find this elusive piece but any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jessica
here is my gallery of vintage lighting. i don’t keep it up to date, there is lots more on the blog: https://retrorenovation.com/galleries/vintage-midcentury-lighting/ do you have a screen shot of carrie and mr. big’s light?
Oh, wow! These people are right down the road from my new-to-me time capsule house! I’ve been in several times but they don’t have a lot on display. Must.ask.questions.
Cool! It’s always so great to hear about true vintage sources. Thanks, Pam, for constantly being on the prowl for us!
Thank you, Jane. I LOVE it when I’m FIRST on the web with news!!! I found this one myself – but get many from readers. Keep ’em coming!!!