Those are the radios in the photo. I adjusted the light levels, but it’s not bright enough on that shelf.

I sort of stumbled into this collection. I had the three on the sides for years and two of them were gifts from my wife after I bought the first one because I liked it so much. Then yesterday, I saw that beautiful one in the middle in an antique store/junk shop for $18 and had to have it. Now we have it on that bookshelf in the photo to display them all, but the lighting is really inadequate. I want to install a light above them at the top of the shelf to show them off better, but I really don’t know much about this stuff in terms of what sort of light I should be using and I don’t want to waste my money on the wrong one.

None of my searching for how to light a Bakelite radio brings up anything fruitful no matter what search terms I can think to use.

Any ideas?

One last thought- Bakelite seems to love dust. I’m going to dust them regularly, but if there is a way to light them well without making the dust show up well, that would be great.

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech
    5•6 months ago

    Electronics is usually photographed in lightboxes with soft lighting all around, which can be somewhat achieved with LED strips around the front side of the display area; however you’d need to add bezels so that viewers aren’t bothered by the lights. Based on the brown, red and gold features of the objects, I would pick a warm white color but that depends on other lights in the room and it would clash with the blue wall (not that the radios don’t already). If you want a museum-like display rather than atmospheric, I’d go for neutral white and keep that consistent across the room.