My vintage rain lamp came with six of these plastic plants.
There are many variations on the foliage used in rain lamps. The plastic foliage is traditionally positioned by putting the stems into the larger holes (not the fiber holes) of the holed tray. Some lamps have placement holes inside the fiber cage as well as outside of it. Sometimes the stems fall through the large holes in the bottom tray; I found one such plastic stem in the lower basin of my vintage lamp that must have been there for decades.
Some newer rain lamps are sold with bright magenta plastic flowers among the green shrubbery, which I believe gives those lamps a very attractive color accent that fits well with the green and gold of the rest of the lamp.
My plastic foliage has wires inside the stems. Only six such plastic plants came with my rain lamp. Although these six plants fit perfectly around the rim of the holed tray, there are four additional holes at the top of the pedestal of my lamp that also appear to be for mounting plants, but no additional plants came with the lamp. I'm not sure where such small plastic plants could be purchased for replacement nowadays.
These bands are rather ugly when viewed individually, but on a dark brass lamp they fit in very well with the conservative decor. These bands should be stored flat if they are to be left off the lamp for a few days, since they will gradually sag under their own weight, as seen in the photo above. The bands are held in place on my lamp by friction alone. The only feature worth noting are the three evenly distributed rectangular cavities on the inner side of each band. Apparently these three cavities are meant to fit over the three screw heads, since the screw heads protrude and would otherwise make the band difficult to slip over the perimeter of the lid.
Not all Johnson Industries lamps appear to have had decorative bands, though. For example, the photo below of Johnson Industries rain lamp serial #218660 shows no decorative bands and doesn't even seem to have special regions for decorative bands.
SYLVANIA / REFLECTOR / 30W 120V
I suspect this is a vintage light bulb, considering how dusty it was. Could it be the original bulb that came with the lamp? Unfortunately, when I cleaned up the bulb to be photographed, the paint with the above lettering came off with the dust.
The new rain lamps that are sold at Wal-Mart use 15-watt bulbs.
One seller on eBay is currently (12-7-05) selling 6-watt fluorescent bulbs that are supposedly for rain lamps, although the bulbs pictured are cylindrical, which wouldn't seem to be well-suited as a small, discrete bulb at the top of a rain lamp.
I'm a little disappointed in the Johnson Industries rain lamp's poor reproduction of this particular statue. The head and face aren't very realistic, and look more like a plastic doll than a classical sculpture. The nonseparation of the legs also looks a bit cheap, and there is a visible seam running down the length of the lady's left side. Close inspection also reveals small cracks and chips in the gold paint, maybe from aging, which makes it look like she has whip marks on her back and leprosy on her face. For the focal point of a lamp, I would have thought they'd put a little bit more quality into it. It looks like the Creators, Inc. lamp's seminude statue might be a more detailed reproduction.
Interestingly, my vintage Venus statue is realistically sunburned a reddish tint on her head and shoulders! I believe this is due to exactly the same reason that we nonstatues become sunburned: long-term exposure from overhead light, in this case the bulb inside the rain lamp.
Nothing really dictates what the centerpiece should be. Some rain lamps have functional clocks, statues of children in the rain, statues of Mary holding baby Jesus, a waterwheel, and one customized lamp held a tiki. Even Disneyland's rain lamp centerpiece changed over the years, starting with mannequins in 1967, and changing to a post with signs in 1968. Like snowglobes with their required snow effect but varying centerpieces, I believe rain lamps are another form of art, albeit kitschy, with the constraint that the rain effect must be present, but the details and centerpiece may vary to suit the purpose. For example, a rain lamp souvenir of a redwood forest might contain a redwood centerpiece, a rain lamp souvenir of Hawaii might contain a tiki centerpiece, a rain lamp souvenir of New Orleans might contain a southern mansion statue surrounded by plastic azaleas, etc. So far, not many variations on the centerpieces seem to have been tried.
