Nantucket Whaling Lamp Finial

Product Details

This Copper Mermaid Nantucket whaling lamp finial replicates the Americana art form of early weathervanes in a handcrafted verdigris green finish for enjoyment all year long. Finial includes whaleboat, whale's tail, and larger three-masted whaleship or bark.

Ninth century folklore notes that weathervanes became popular due to a papal edict that a rooster, the emblem of St. Peter, top every Christian church. The marriage of these three-dimensional weather-cocks to the metal insignia banners (fanes) of the Middle Ages begot the use of weathervanes as architectural adornments. In mid-seventeenth century America, weathervanes forecasted the weather for the farmer and mariner. Colonial craftsmen created original forms of hand-crafted silhouette or three-dimensional weathervanes. After the Revolution, imaginative copper and tin smiths fashioned a variety of barnyard animals or figures representing coastal life, or whatever the property owner wished to have for a weathervane form.

Made in New England.

Verdigris (green). The finials vary in size by design and are approximately 3" x 3".