Lamps

Add a pop of color to your home decor with Pablo Pixo Task Lamp in Glo or Teal, two new colors sold at Paradiso. Pablo, which was founded in San Francisco in 1993 by Venezuelan-born industrial designer Pablo Pardo, is considered a top contemporary lighting company. The lamps also come in white, graphite and silver. The new colors arrive just in time for the explosion of bright hues that are expected to be popular this season. The lamps are fashionable and functional, according to Sharona Gamliel, who owns Paradiso with her husband, Ric Martinkus.

Certain bedrooms are best described as home hideaways places where one can take a mini vacation from workaday worries and other vexations. At a certain point, the word "bedroom" seems too weak to describe these rooms. "Boudoir" is a more correct term for these sleeping spaces that are also opulent, playful retreats, where the imagination conjures romance and it becomes real.Interior designer Greg Le Vanis successfully created such an atmosphere when he transformed two rooms in an older home into one bedroom suite.

Baltimore's historic Camden Station has been artfully restored, but the public won't be able to enter the 1853 landmark just yet.The $2.2 million face lift, celebrated during a rededication ceremony yesterday, is part of the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which will open with a week of festivities beginning April 2.But the historic train station will remain locked until its interior can be restored by a private investor. The goal was to stabilize the exterior in the interim to keep the building from deteriorating, and to spruce it up for the ballpark opening, state officials said yesterday.

What's a biblical archaeology magazine to do when faced with the prospect of publishing erotic pictures?Ask its readers.After hearing from 700 subscribers, editors at Biblical Archaeology Review decided to publish in their current issue photos of ancient ceramic oil lamps depicting couples engaged in intercourse.For the minority of readers unhappy about that, the editors designed the pages so that the pictures could be removed without damaging the rest of the magazine.The small, bowl-shaped lamps, made in the second to third century of the Christian era, were found in 1987 during an archaeological dig in the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

Not so long ago, high-end hotel rooms seemed to come in two flavors: blandly tasteful or, thanks to hotelier Ian Schrager and designer Philippe Starck, surreal and cutting-edge. But these days, hotels seeking crucial repeat business are focusing on comfort and high style that's neither off-putting nor cookie-cutter. In fact, in many of the finer spots, hotel rooms are looking less like hotel rooms -- and more like something out of a fabulous home. To lure moneyed guests used to the very best, the idea is to create hotel rooms "equal to or better than what they have at home," says Cheryl Rowley, the Beverly Hills designer responsible for a lively makeover of the rooms at Philadelphia's Four Seasons Hotel.

What is GATT?The sound your cat makes when it coughs up a fur ball?Come on, what's GATT?The short answer is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. But the long answer is that very few people really know what it is.Why is that?Because it's 22,000 pages long. And how many lawmakers and journalists do you think have actually read it? Especially since many of them have difficulty reading anything that can't fit on a cocktail napkin.So what does it do?It lowers tariffs 38 percent worldwide.

"Back to basics" seems to be the interior-design buzz term for the '90s. The fashionable approach these days is to simplify, simplify, simplify.But there's one area of home furnishings that I doubt will ever go back to basics. That's because innovations in lighting techniques and fixtures have been so useful that hardly anyone will want to return to candles or to shaded lamps with incandescent bulbs.Actually, there may still be a limited demand for those most flattering of light sources. Because of their golden glow and dim emissions, they're perfect for intimate dinners and cozy conversations.

THIS WEEK'S news contained a story about several of the Baltimore neighborhoods where I often walk, bank, shop and dine - the Mount Vernon-Penn Station-Bolton Hill section of the city. Tucked within the story was a comment from someone who said these neighborhoods needed a change of streetlight, perhaps outdoor lamps on a more human scale, lights geared to the sidewalk, not automobiles. Amen. Ever since the city ripped out the graceful old streetlights I knew in my youth, I've been a critic of the aluminum poles and their ugly fluorescent glow.

Nine families at an Edgemere apartment complex were displaced after a fire about 6:45 p.m. Saturday that started when a halogen lamp tipped over, a Baltimore County Fire Department spokesman said yesterday. The blaze was under control within about half an hour, but caused smoke damage throughout the three-story apartment building on Loring Court and heavy fire damage in the unit where it started, said spokesman Glenn Blackwell. "One person was trapped on the second floor and was rescued," he said.

DOWNTOWN Reisterstown is looking good these days -- aesthetic street lamps, new brick sidewalks, a freshly paved main drag.But what is that big field of dirt at the north end of town, just opposite the High's store and the Lamplight Lounge? Alas, we know what it is, or rather, what it is going to be.It's going to be a parking lot for a strip shopping center going up, and, this being America, where the world revolves around the automobile, there must be a conspicuous sea of asphalt.But why must it be that way?