Cobbler’s lamp

Light in the Dark Ages

In the days of the Dark Ages, the only light available came from tallow candles, oil lamps and torches. All these lighting devices give poor and uncertain light for the exacting and precise work of the cobbler's craft.



Slovenian cobblers solved the problem by capturing the light with a system of glass globes filled with water. These distributed and balanced the light in the manner of lenses, which could be lifted or lowered to provide direct light to a particular surface. The placing and the number of the globes varied according to the technical demands of various craft tasks.


Cobbler`s Lamp was together with many other antique objects of practical use, saved from oblivion by two masters of the folk craft, Jernej and Matej Kosmač.