In the days before electricity, light below a vessel's deck was provided by candles, oil and kerosene lamps, all dangerous aboard a wooden ship. A clever solution for the lighting problem was the deck prism. Laid flush into the deck, small conical prisms drew light down below the decks, without weakening the deck planks.
The deck prisms that we carry at HolEssence are replicas of the deck prisms from the Charles W. Morgan sailing vessel which is berthed at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut. Laurie bought her first two deck prisms years ago while in Mystic, Connecticut on a business trip.
During a major restoration of the Charles W. Morgan sailing vessel that took place between the years of 1977-1984, it was discovered that several of the original deck prisms on the ship had been cracked and damaged. Molds were taken from the original 19th century prisms and hand-cast replicas were produced to replace the originals. The replicas were so popular that they were made available for purchase to the public. These are the very replicas that we carry at HolEssence, and they are hand cast right here in the United States. .
Each deck prism comes with a lit base. We keep the one in our living room on throughout the night making it much easier to navigate that midnight trip to the kitchen to let one of the dogs out, or to get a drink of water. Some people use them without the base as a paperweight, garden decoration, door stopper, or collectible.
