Feuerhand Baby Special 276

The Baby Special 276 is a small storm lantern about 26 centimetres high, made of galvanised sheet steel. A round fuel tank holds about a third of a litre of paraffin, enough for some twenty hours. From the tank rise two tubular side frames that carry air down to a flat-wick burner, and between them sits a clear borosilicate globe inside a cage of crossed wires. A lever lifts the globe for lighting; a wire bail carries the whole.

The lantern belongs to the Baby series that Nier-Feuerhand of Beierfeld, in the Saxon Erzgebirge, introduced in 1933, according to the maker, or in 1933/34 by the reckoning of the collector Detlef Bunk. Its globe came from Schott in Jena. Cold-blast lanterns like this one draw fresh air down the frame to the flame, which keeps them burning in a gale, and the small Baby models sold widely abroad.

The firm's own history then broke apart. Production stopped at the end of 1944, and in 1945 Soviet forces dismantled the Beierfeld works. Two of the Nier brothers rebuilt the business at Hohenlockstedt in Holstein, cutting new dies and, by 1950, making a revised Baby series there; the 276 has carried the name Baby Special since 1954. It lit West German road works until the 1970s and was exported to regions without electricity, where hurricane lanterns were daily equipment rather than garden ornaments.

By 2002 the 276 was the only lantern the firm still made. An insolvency at the end of 2012 halted production for most of the following year, and the lantern came back in galvanised rather than dip-tinned steel, later also in powder-coated colours. The brand now belongs to Petromax, and the lamp is still pressed in Hohenlockstedt, a working object that has become, almost by accident, an emblem of German manufacture.