Candle extinguisher
A snuffer (also erase cones , Löschhut , Lichthut , Löschnapf , Löschhorn , flame killers , éteignoir , vapor horn or damper is called) a device made of metal, with which the light of candles can be deleted. The actual extinguishing cap is usually attached to a pole. If the extinguishing cap is placed over the flame, the flame will be suffocated as soon as the oxygen contained in the cap is used up. Compared to simply blowing out, extinguishing with a candle extinguisher has the advantage that no hot wax can splash around and that hardly any wax vapor is produced.
to form
The shape of the extinguisher is reminiscent of hats or caps . They are often made as a hollow cone with an open base , as a pyramid or in the shape of a bell . There are also figuratively decorated candle extinguishers in many variations.
Fire extinguishing caps are usually attached to a rod (often also via a joint) with which they are operated. Larger specimens are sometimes operated with a handle attached directly to the hat. Since altar candles are sometimes difficult to reach, the stick of the candle extinguisher in churches is sometimes over two meters long. On such bars there is often a wrapped wax wick for lighting candles, which is passed through a tube to the top of the hat and lit there.
Candlesticks, especially high-quality craftsmanship, were often sold together with a fire extinguisher in the 19th century or at least contained a device for hanging a fire extinguishing hat. There were also special trays to put down the extinguishing cap that had become hot due to the use.
Another device for extinguishing candles are wick scissors (also called light scissors, light cleaners or wick tongs), which were mainly used to shorten the wick that was previously necessary .
history
Already in the 2nd book of Moses chap. 25, verse 38 light scissors and fire bowls (Hebrew ה) made of gold are prescribed to keep the seven-armed lamp clean . These fire bowls are described in various ways in the Jewish interpretation of the Bible: as water-filled dishes, but also as spoon-like devices for extinguishing, cleaning wicks or removing residual oil from oil lamps .
Candle extinguishers of the type still known today were an everyday item until the spread of electric light . They belonged to the hand tools of the light cleaner . Extinguishing cones attached to poles could also be used to extinguish candles that were burning in hard-to-reach places. Candle extinguishers were particularly needed in churches and theater buildings , where there were a particularly large number of candles. Such devices are still in use today for extinguishing liturgical candles in churches or Christmas tree candles . Similar instruments are used to extinguish the flames of gel chimneys .
Candle extinguishers as a motif in art and literature
In the baroque emblematics , the popular printmaking and especially the caricature of the 19th century, extinguishing caps were represented as symbols for the extinguishing of symbolic “flames” (such as “of life” or “of freedom”).
In the Dutch still lifes of the 17th and 18th centuries, the candle extinguisher was used as a vanitas symbol for human mortality and imminent death, as a kind of memento mori .
William Mason published under the pseudonym Malcolm MacGreggor a satirical ode to Mr. Pinchbeck, upon his newly invented patent candle-snuffers ( Ode to Mr. Pinchbeck on the occasion of his newly invented patent candle extinguisher; London 1776). The hook of the satire was the London watchmaker and inventor Christopher Pinchbeck , whom Mason recommends to the British government as a savior in the "extinguishing" of the war of independence that was "inflamed" in North America : Haste then, and quash the hot Turmoil, / That flames in Boston's angry Soil (Beeile yourself and defeat the hot tumult / that burns on Boston's angry ground).
In the Age of Enlightenment (French: Age des Lumières: "Age of Light"), the Jesuit order was sometimes mockingly referred to in France as the Ordre de l'Éteignoir (Order of the extinguisher) due to its anti-Enlightenment, "darkening" attitude .
As long as you can still recognize them, fire-extinguishing cones designed as caps seem to have been part of theatrical costumes. A radiant ghost that appears to the hero Scrooge in Charles Dickens ' story A Christmas Carol (1843), for example, carries a fire extinguisher with him, which he puts on when he is not in a good mood.
Collections
The Lichtermuseum Wettersdorf in Walldürn shows, among other things, various candle extinguishers in its permanent exhibition on the cultural history of candle lighting.
literature
- Hubertus Fischer: Who will turn off the light? European cartoon and everyday world. 1790-1990. (= Writings on caricature and critical graphics , volume 2). Hatje, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-7757-0448-5 (on the fire extinguisher as the motif of the caricature).
- Article damper , extinguishing horn and lamp in the Oeconomic Encyclopedia
- Automatic extinguishing device for candles . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 4, 2001, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 88–89 ( luise-berlin.de - patent for an automatic fire extinguishing hat, 1878).
