Lampe Berger Fragrance Lamp
Pop quiz: Aside from being famous, what do Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso have in common? They each owned a Lampe Berger, an ingenious little device that helps refresh a room after you've smoked a cigar.
Invented in 1898 by pharmacist Maurice Berger, Lampe Berger (pronounced Lam-ber-djaye) is a fragrance lamp that works at the molecular level to deodorize the air. Berger originally created his device to combat the problem of sepsis inside French hospitals, but soon discovered the lamp had appeal as a commercial product.
For more than a century, people (particularly Europeans) have been using Lampe Berger lamps to remove foul odors in the home, but it wasn't until recently that the company began actively marketing the devices directly to cigar smokers.
So do these elegant little lamps that come in all sorts of attractive shapes and sizes, from colored glass to porcelain and even wood-covered, actually eliminate cigar smoke and odor? The short answer: sort of.
While a Lampe Berger is not a replacement for an air purifier such as the Rabbit Air Minus A2, which both sucks up smoke and eliminates odors, the lamp does effectively phase out the smell of an extinguished cigar. We found that lighting the lamp about 15 minutes before putting out a cigar worked best.
Lighting the Lampe Berger lamp is actually a fun little ritual, but before it can be used, a little prep work is required. First, fill the lamp about one-third full with either a scented or neutral oil, or a combination of the two. (Lampe Berger offers about a dozen different scents.) While some may enjoy the scented oil, which are created by master perfumers from French fragrance houses such as Coco Chanel, we found the neutral oil the most satisfying. After this step, you then insert the "burner" into the lamp's lid so that the attached wick descends into the liquid. Wait 20 minutes for the wick to absorb the oil. The lamp is now ready for use.
Now comes the fun part. Light the gray stone that is atop the burner, and it will catch fire and a flame about 6 inches high will begin to dance. Allow the hypnotic flame to burn for two minutes and then blow it out. This activates the heat inside the lamp, pushing the fragrance out through the wick. This catalytic combustion attracts odor-causing molecules and removes them from the air. In a 400-square-foot room, the lamp only needs to burn for about 20 minutes to clear up odors.
The frequency in which the oil needs to be replaced depends on how often you use the lamp. We found two bottles of oil, which come in 500 ml containers and sell for $20 apiece, lasted about a month with daily usage. The wick, too, will need replacement, albeit only twice a year, at most.
Sold in select tobacconists and smaller, boutique retail stores, a Lampe Berger starter kit, which includes a lamp, funnel, two types of oil (scented and unscented) and burner, retails for about $40.
Visit www.lampeberger.us for more information.
