My first lamp purchase (or is it a French candlestick?)

[countryman]

I'm afraid I bought my first lamp 
Hopefully the modification only involves 1 hole drilled into the top.
I suppose this is what Alain Groult describes as a  "Grammont Chandelier rainuré", but in nickel. I will see what arrives...
Auction link: https://www.ebay.de/itm/325096118136

[19and41]

It looks pretty nice regardless.

[FABphones]

1920's / 1930's. I like these, very stylish. The écouteur may be from a different phone, but it is a nice design.

The conversion from the outside looks tidy, looking forward to seeing more photos when it arrives and following your restoration.

[Etienne]

PTT modèle 1918. Handset December 1923 and correct to the phone.
I really love these phones, although electrically identical, there is a tremendous diversity in this range, metal painted or nickel, both in many combinations, wood walnut, mahogany, oak, round, octagonal... I have 4 of them, more or less complete.
It was a time when the PTT did not have enough authority to force the builders to standardize their products. The Marty 1910 was designed to facilitate PTT employee's work when on field, and was the same "disaster"... each builder developed its own design on the same electrical base- much to collectors' joy!
Produced around 1918-1928 (superseded by the PTT 1924).
Diagram here: http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=25791.msg252691#msg252691
The lamp socket is worrying. It may mean that the switch holder has been destroyed or at least damaged. Hope it is not the case and the lamp cord was outside of the column. The hook is bent downwards and the upper part that holds the socket sits queer. Fingers crossed!!!
The loop to hang your handset is put the wrong way, and so is the transmitter cap. Can't understand why it is so often the case, but this is easily fixed.
Yours seems to be missing the ring between the base & column.
It also existed in wood:
http://alain.levasseur.pagesperso-orange.fr/
Below pictures show the upper parts on my Grammont.

[countryman]

Thanks for your explanations Etienne 
It really looks like they wanted to avoid making 2 of the exact same kind...
The phone arrived and here are some more pics. It really is built very complicated... the hookswitch holder seems to be intact. Just the cap was drilled and a threaded tube was jammed into it.
The base is dated 8/22, and the nickel is in good condition.
The phone will need restoration but looks really impressive at first glance.

Edit to add a streetview pic - probably the same building still. All the French factories printed central Paris addresses on their phones. I wonder if there was any production or just a representative office address?

[tubaman]

Very nice looking phone and a good price even given the lamp conversion.

[Pourme]

~

I would be proud to display that piece as is. Very good find!

You always find interesting pieces.

~

[countryman]

Thanks Benny 
I had to learn to let a lot of stuff just pass by but I still can't resist when something really unusual appears...

[countryman]

First restoration steps. The hookswitch holder was not damaged, but the contacts were missing. I found a contact stack in the parts box that could be modified to fit. The bigger leaf spring was ground to size out of an old saw blade.
The drilled hole in the end cap was plugged. I filed a bolt end to size and nickel plated it. It was then cut off to form a tapered plug that wedges in from the inner side.

The Phillips head screws in the first pic will be replaced with slotted ones. I used what I had for now. Metric M3 screws can be used but the pitch is not 100% right. The threads are not imperial either. It could be "Bodmer thread", which already used diameters in mm but a different pitch from modern metric.

The "stick" part of the phone is made out of 3 concentric tubes, very complex!

[countryman]

Thank you very much for your votes in the FOTM contest 

The phone has newly made cords now. The missing ring between stem and base is important to hold both of them in place, so it had to be improvised. I won't tell anybody where I found it. It's my sinkret 
The stem was also sitting too deep in the base previously. Etienne's diagram and picture in the link above was a great help to rearrange the wiring, thanks for that!
The ecouteur had some missing parts, and no magnetism. I mounted new soldering eyelets for the wires, a new diaphragm and I found a rubber O-ring for a spacer. The sound was still very low because of the lack of magnetism. I tried adding strong mini magnets with no avail. Eventually I disassembled the original magnets in order to re-magnetize them. By chance I found that both horseshoe laminations had been put together the wrong way, so that their magnetism subtracted instead of adding up! Turning one of them around fixed the receiver...
Close to it 100. birthday the candlestick now receives calls just fine again. Even the transmitter is in good order! It's not dated, but one of my oldest good working transmitters for sure.

[19and41]

Great job!  It's always good to see a resurrection from a lamp.

[Etienne]

Wonderful!
The ring's guilloched style is not shocking at all on the phone. It responds to the end cap nicely.

[countryman]

It was a lucky find I guess. The aged nickel matches perfectly, as well as the pattern as you mentioned. The diameter was also perfect, I just had to grind away the inner threads with a sanding tool.