At his home sheet metal workshop in Hollis, Peter Lovell crafts lanterns in the style of kerosene- and gas-lit lanterns from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Those early lamps were made of tinned steel; his are made of copper.
Lovell’s family established Little Wolf Copper & Lighting Inc. in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1957. In 2004, Lovell bought the lighting division from his uncle and moved it to Maine. All of the machinery in his workshop is manually powered.
“Most of the machines are as old or older than I am, and I’m not young anymore,” Lovell said, laughing. “Some of the stuff is early 1900s and some is probably 1960s.”
Lovell makes both indoor and outdoor customized lamps. He starts with a stock light and mixes and matches standard pieces to create the light the customer wants. He also does full custom work, where he starts with a blank sheet of paper and works with the customer to make something unique.
Customers choose from three different finishes: shiny copper; coppertone, which looks like an old penny; and green, the color the copper turns when it ages naturally.
“If you keep it shiny, it means you’re going to be working at polishing it,” he said. “The most popular finish we do by far is the old penny look.”
Lovell has a set of lights at his own house that only began developing a green tint within the past couple of years. “If you’re close to the ocean, they’ll go green faster,” he said. “We can force them to be whatever color anybody wants. Some people love the green, some people hate the green.”
Lovell will soon stop selling lamps on his website, and they are no longer in stores. He said what people want from the lamps is so personal, from the sizing to design tweaks, he found himself constantly having to make adjustments to the fixtures. So from now on, he wants to work with customers directly to give them exactly what they want.
The lamps start at $200, but most cost $300-$500. You can see examples of his work at his littlewolfcopper.com
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