Become enlightened about lamp parts at Moss LightingTuesday, January 25, 2011
BY BILL ERVOLINO
The Record
STAFF WRITER
Retailer specializing in hard-to-find lamp components and other vintage electrical supplies.
Bill Ervolino explores the little known, unusual and sometimes weird things in North Jersey.271 Main St., Hackensack; 201 487-5086, mosslighting.com.
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Alan Rosinsky works the Moss Lighting shelves. Left, an antique bronze lamp.
STAFF PHOTOS BY DON SMITH
As Ira Moss leads me through the back room of his lighting store and down a gloomy and rather ancient-looking staircase, I start to pick up a distinctly Harry Potter-ish vibe.
Perhaps it's that cobweb over there, the glints of light bouncing off the stacks of old brass tubes or those strange-looking crystal globes in the corner.
"Watch your head," Moss says, once we're in the cellar. Through the shadows, I see hundreds — no, thousands — of boxes, neatly stacked and impeccably organized. Some are opened, others are still sealed.
Their contents, including items Moss may sell for just a couple of dollars, are almost priceless to the people who need them: spare parts for lamps, chandeliers and assorted other light fixtures going back more than a century.
As Moss would be the first to admit, his shop, Moss Lighting on Hackensack's Main Street, isn't the prettiest store on the block. Or, the biggest. Or, even — ironically enough — the most brightly lit.
But North Jerseyans, Manhattanites and plenty of overseas clients routinely seek out this seemingly one-of-a-kind shop for supplies that are hard (and sometimes impossible) to find anywhere else.
Moss, who lives in Oradell, is also a favorite of movie production companies, since period films call for period sets and props — including authentic light fixtures that won't arouse the fury of moviegoers who pay close attention to such things.
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Moss Lighting also carries period wall outlets, vintage doorbell buttons and at least one lavish curiosity stored off the premises: an enormous art deco ceiling fixture that once hung in Radio City Music Hall.
Another conversation piece, on display in the store, is a six-armed ceiling fixture that goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. "Three of the arms are for electricity and three are for gas," Moss explains. "When the electricity went out, as it often did in those days, they would use it as a gas fixture."
As Moss proudly notes, the store, which was opened by his parents, Murray and Rose Mossack in 1952, is often the final destination for people who have looked everywhere else for a certain switch, plate or base made by companies that went out of business before the now-66-year-old Ira Moss was born.
(Although the Mossacks opened their doors during the Eisenhower era, they accumulated vintage fixtures, parts and wiring through auction houses and liquidation sales.)
The Mossacks' store, originally located in the Bronx, moved to Hackensack in the early 1970s. Ira Moss and his wife, Vera, took over the business in 1982. But, since her retirement, he now works alongside nephew Alan Rosinsky, 50, and another employee, 40-year-old Alex Delgado.
The store does a fair amount of walk-in business but has a high volume of referrals (mostly from other lighting stores in the area) and, more recently, a lot of online inquiries, which Rosinsky handles. And many of these clients are, in a word, desperate.
As Moss recalls, "I had a man come in once, looking for a certain part. He had been looking for two years, and he said, 'I know you're not going to have this, but ...' And I said, 'Oh, I have that,' and handed it to him in two minutes."
Even Moss isn't sure how he remembers where all of these parts and pieces are, but he says that he and Delgado can almost always find things very quickly.
And when they can't?
Moss groans. "It drives you crazy, but that's part of any business."
Upstairs and down, the shop takes up approximately 6,000 square feet. (Moss also keeps an additional 10,000 square feet of warehouse space in South Hackensack.) And beyond the usual array of parts and wiring, the floor-to-ceiling inventory includes odd-looking bolts and screws; finials in every conceivable style and shape; steel globe holders; brass back plates; four-inch harps; porcelain sockets; gold filigree lamp bases from the '30s and '40s … the list is endless.
"From the beginning," Moss says, "my parents were always looking out for these things. They always said, 'Someone is going to need them, eventually.' "
Occasionally, Rosinsky says, clients get emotional. "They don't just say, 'You have my part!' They say, 'You saved my lamp!'
Moss even sells parts for 19th-century gas lamps, which may make him the only electrical supply store in the area that stocks items which pre-date electrical supplies.
"Everyone winds up here, eventually," Rosinsky adds, before resurrecting a retail slogan that's older than he is: "If we don't have it, you don't need it."
After a moment, though, Rosinsky recants, remembering the customer who — like me — came into the store and began having a Harry Potter flashback.
"He walked in," Rosinsky recalls, and said to us, 'This looks like Diagon Alley in the Potter movies! Can you buy wands here?'
It was one of the few times Moss has ever said, "No, we don't carry them."
E-mail: ervolino@northjersey.com