There?s nothing ?solid? about the 1908 date for this bulb ? it?s off by at least twenty years.
A design patent was issued to Alfred Weber (an Austrian living in New York at the time) in 1927 for the
design of a lantern shaped incandescent lamp. Just one year later, another strikingly
similar design patent was issued to Abraham L. Buschman on June 19th, 1928. Buschman held numerous patents from the 1920s through the 1950s, mostly related to decorative lighting and Christmas lighting. During the 1930s and 1940s the New York Merchandise Company sold numerous items under the ?Reliance? name such as Christmas lighting sets and decorative shaped bulbs based around the patents of Buschman. Though not supported by evidence (yet), it?s my assumption that the company probably imported their figural bulbs from more than one of the countries that produced them (the most common being Austria, Japan and Germany). This being said, it?s probably not unusual to find this lantern bulb with the ?JAPAN? mark on the base. I have quite a few large figurals from different countries that look virtually identical, almost as if these different producers used the same mold.
What I find interesting are the two design patents mentioned above that were issued only a year apart from one another. The designs are very similar in appearance. Below are photos that you can compare. The first one shown is the 1927 Weber patent and the second is the 1928 Buschman patent assigned to the New York Merchandise Co. (Reliance).
