The department houses one of the leading collections of the Museum presenting the history of lighting from the ancient to contemporary times. Its beginnings date back to the 1970s when the Konin region was already Poland's top producer of electric energy, which influenced the decision to collect such historical objects. Our collection, consisting of over 1,000 exhibits, includes kerosene, gas, electric, and oil lamps, lanterns, technical and utility lamps, various candlesticks, as well as lighting accessories and illustrated materials related to the history of lighting.
Many of these lamps deserve special attention because of their exceptional beauty of forms, rich ornamentation and the material they were made of. The largest portion of the collection is represented by kerosene lamps dating back to the period from the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Most of them come from German production plants, such as Carl Holy, Erich & Graetz, and Otto Müller, Schwintzer and Gräff (all operating in Berlin), Hugo Schneider (Leipzig), and Kaestner & Taebelmann (Erfurt). There is also a large number of exhibits representing a Vienna-based Rudolf Ditmar's lamp factory - the biggest European factory of this kind. The collection also includes lamps produced by a well-known London 'Hink and Sons' company. There are also lamps from Polish factories, although their manufacturing was limited due to historical issues. We possess products of popular Warsaw manufacturers, such as Jan Serkowski or Aron Eilstein, and of the Warsaw-based company Brüneer - Schneider - Ditmar, belonging to the manufacturers from Vienna and Leipzig.
An important element of the lighting collection is a group of electric lamps of the first half of the 20th century, mainly by Polish manufacturers: A. Marciniak, Borkowski Brothers, Łopieński Brothers, Henneberg Brothers, A. Stark.
Apart from the most popular lamps used for residential interiors, a unique part of the collection is represented by technical and utility lamps, which broaden and complete the lighting collection. Due to their simple form and no ornamentation, they appear among museum collections much less frequently than salon lamps. What deserves particular attention is a group of communication lamps, among which we should mention railroad, carriage, automobile, motorcycle and bicycle lamps. A significant past of the collection is represented by photographic, therapeutic, and mining lamps, as well as lighting equipment used for practical purposes.