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Where you place your lighting, of course, is important. It's where light is most welcomed and desired, especially when it's your personal expression of what to illuminate and what to enhance.

On a table next to where you sit and read? Yes, especially useful in days and nights as these. By a window to enhance or replace natural light around sunset? Welcomed, in the right balance.

We also believe that the appeal of the lamp itself is part of the experience. And nowhere is this more evident than when Gump's love of fine Asian design is translated into the look of our lamps. We've been doing this for a while now, from the early 1900s in fact. More about that later.

Here are two elegant examples of what lamp light can do for your home.

SAKURA LAMP

The cherry blossom, or "sakura," is often called Japan's unofficial national flower. Both the tree and its blossoms are celebrated in Japanese culture: an inspiration for art and the impetus for entire communities to celebrate the change of seasons. There also a flowering form is silhouetted in a composed garden, and here at home magnificent groves of blossoming trees are found from Washington D.C. to California: cherry blossoms are welcome harbingers of nature's beauty.

Our lamp recalls themes that famously appear in the "ukiyo-e" genre, classic woodprints by Hiroshige and others. Their vibrant celebration of life and landscape was captured in a compact form. The refined golden hue of our Sakura Lamp's compact, classic Asian-urn form complements the hand painting of branch and bird.

Woodblock print of Cherry Blossoms and Mount Fuji.

Artist: Hiroshige (1797-1858)

Cherry blossoms often symbolize clouds as they bloom and float overhead.

Our sakura blossoms and branches are home to birds of paradise, which add graceful life to our lamp, its base crafted of porcelain in the style of a Chinese urn. Celebrated for their color and plumage, the birds of paradise take full advantage of the reflected lamp light to display eye-catching hues in porcelain as they do in nature.

SHOP SAKURA LAMP

MARI SCALLOPED LAMP

Vignettes of an Asian fan and other traditional imagery seem almost to float against detailed backgrounds. This is achieved by the careful application of color to the Mari Lamp. Softened by a white cambric shade, the fine porcelain base shows the mastery created when the subtly scalloped form and hand painted detail combine in homage to its 17th century Japanese original.

The fan is an immediately recognizable icon of Japanese culture. It's one of a small number of ancient crafts whose origins lie at home in Japan. As imagery, fans are entwined in the nation's long and fascinating history, especially associated with the times when they were reserved for display by the Samurai class and Japanese aristocrats.

Note the decorative golden finial. It's a gesture to Chinese symbolism, a form of the "Shou" which denotes happiness, harmony in life, and longevity.

Our lamp celebrates its glowing harmony with Imari ware, whose decorative detail and carefully chosen colors achieve a balanced whole.

Antique Japanese Imari Charger. Late 19th century.

SHOP MARI LAMP

Now, picture Gump's in the early decades of the 1900s. The nation and the world joined San Franciscans for the World's Fair launched here in the City by the Bay, the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. Exhibitors came from all and far corners of the globe, blending the exotic and the familiar. China, Japan and other Asian countries brought wares, art and architecture on a scale not seen before on the West Coast.

The China National Pavilion at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.

A.L. Gump, the legendary "Mr. Gump of Gump's," and host to kings, presidents and celebrities, was enthralled by what he saw at the Fair. Here was an opportunity to satisfy the growing interest in all things Asian. This trend was growing in Europe and the East Coast: inspiration for Whistler's Peacock Room, the French painters drawn to "Japonisme" and Louis Comfort Tiffany's Asian-influenced glass designs.

In Gump's San Francisco, Asian art as well as its porcelains, textiles and lacquerware were now featured in its new Asian-themed rooms - the Lotus Room, the Jade Room - just to name two.

Here's a snapshot or two. From early in the 1900s, one of the Asian rooms with bowls and vases on display along with other fine imported goods.

Here's the Gump's main floor with Asian ceramics, including lamps created from classic Asian materials. (The great bronze Japanese Buddha is now in the Japanese Tea Garden of our Golden Gate Park, a gift of the Gump family in honor of A.L. Gump.)

Our tradition of offering the best in Asian design continues through the decades. Note this room designed and assembled with an "Asian Moderne" flair, including a fine example of lamps sold during the 30s and 40s.

We've come full circle. The legacy continues. We at Gump's wish you good lamp light.

Wandering Eye Ring

The fundamental things that apply and make Anthony Lent's jewelry so wearable and so giftable are the distinctive merging of painstaking craftsmanship with a highly personal vision. His gold and silver surfaces reflect a total commitment to quality. The forms may be classic or idiosyncratic, and are sculpted with style.

Whether you love the allure of fine jewelry as a personal statement, or as a gift that shows your perspicacity, Anthony Lent's collection at Gump's will offer a ring, necklace, or earrings and more to please.

STAR FACE EARRINGS

Your choices are varied: the classic look of 18-carat gold Earrings set with diamonds that radiate a star-struck chic.

MOONFACE RING

Or the 18-carat gold and sterling silver Moonface Ring, set with diamond eyes, whose whimsical and benign expression reflects 19th century celestial drawings.

MORPHEUS EARRINGS

Sculpted of 18-carat yellow gold, what Lent calls his Morpheus Earrings are an elegant combination of tranquil faces and wings shaped into earrings. They are inspired by Morpheus, the ancient god of dreams. They say "Dream and take flight."

(How appropriate for a jeweler that the origin of "Morpheus" comes from the Greek for "form" or "shape.)

TAHITIAN PEARL & DIAMOND NECKLACE

Anthony Lent's love of the whimsical emerges in this graceful pendant. In an 18-carat gold setting, it combines a glowing Tahitian pearl with multiple white diamonds on a fanciful base that culminates in a dangling pair of gold legs! A master stroke of design that not only finishes off the pendant but "kicks" its elements into another realm of fancy. Cousin to idiosyncratic Victorian jewelry and other jewels of times past? Going back to Renaissance goldsmithy?

 SHOP ANTHONY LENT

"Tony," as he's widely known, owes his status as a master jeweler to the study of sculpture, glass and metals at the Philadelphia College of Art where he discovered that many of his favorite artists, such as Benvenuto Cellini and Albrecht Durer, were also goldsmiths. Lent went on to further study in Germany, where he immersed himself in the traditions and technologies of European design.

When Anthony Lent returned to the United States, he worked as a jeweler in New York City for fine jewelry houses and also created a unique line of his own. He taught at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), where he was chairman of the Jewelry Design department from 1990-2001

JEWELER ANTHONY LENT with his sons David & Max.

Lent's design studio is near Philadelphia, in an old carriage house where he works with his sons David and Max, fashioning the fine jewelry for women and men that has been his focus for nearly fifty years. With a unique ability to combine - in his own words - sophistication with irreverence, Anthony Lent has found inspiration in sculptural figures, celestial bodies, human faces, and creature both fabled and feared.

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU.

Feel free to pronounce this Danish silversmithy’s name as “George Jensen,” American style. Gump’s does, too, since Jensen’s extraordinarily pleasing forms and high-quality fabrication are the point. Pronunciation won’t get in the way.

SHOP GEORG JENSEN

While we relish the Danish pronunciation as well, we’ve been home to Jensen’s notable designs for some time. Gump’s celebrates Jensen’s ability to harmonize with contemporary lifestyles, whether fashioned from precious silver or no-nonsense materials like stainless steel.

Take the company’s move to stainless steel. It’s only enhanced Jensen’s appeal while making good design within reach for many more Gump’s clients.

BERNADOTTE BOWL

Savor this mirror-polished stainless steel Bowl, originally in sterling silver from designer Sigvard Bernadotte’s original 1930s concept. It’s not every firm that enjoyed such a distinctive and rewarding relationship with a Swedish prince who developed into an influential modernist designer, born Sigvard Oscar Fredrik Bernadotte, Prince Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, grandson of Queen Victoria.

More to the point, the Bowl is classic Scandinavian design at its most timeless.

COBRA CANDLESTICKS

2017 saw the introduction of the Cobra collection, exemplified by the sinuous curves and gleaming surfaces of these candlesticks, created for Georg Jensen by award-winning designer Constantin Wortmann. Crafted of stainless steel with a mirror-polish finish. 

BLOOM BOWL

Inspired by the shape of Japanese cherry blossoms in full bloom, this stunning bowl designed by Helle Damkjær is made of stainless steel with an 18-karat gold plated finish.

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Was it serendipity or mere coincidence that allowed San Francisco to play a big role in Georg Jensen’s international success? Jensen recognizes its fame grew from early success in the United States, specifically here in San Francisco when Jensen brought his Danish silver to the 1915 World’s Fair, called the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. Jensen walked away with both a gold medal for original design, and the Grand Prize for silver jewelry. Georg Jensen was naturally encouraged to invest in a larger marketplace than Denmark or Northern Europe.

A. Livingston Gump, “Mr. Gump of Gump’s,” (as he was often called) and his merchants would have noticed this breath of silvery Nordic inspiration. There are competing legends of what happened next: that Gump’s bought many of Georg Jensen’s pieces, including the jewelry. There is also a rumor that William Randolph Hearst – he of the Hearst newspaper chain - purchased the majority of the Georg Jensen works brought from Denmark. Sadly, sources to confirm either legend are thin on the ground.

What is true is that A.L. invested heavily in goods from around the world that were, in a way, an adjunct to the galleries of the Exposition. Also true was Gump’s continuing appreciation of the Georg Jensen collections, represented by Jensen’s decision to advance the company’s “air of luxury” by working with select stores like Gump’s, Neiman Marcus in Dallas, and Chicago’s Marshall Field in the 1950s.

Today, Georg Jensen is still a Gump's tradition, one that we’re happy to share with everyone for the sheer appeal of how the use and appreciation of good design will enhance any environment and elevate your entertaining.