- 19
Tiffany Studios
Estimate
250,000 - 350,000 USD
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Description
- Tiffany Studios
- An Early Pebble and Cabochon Table Lamp
- quartz pebbles, favrile glass and patinated bronze with a clear glass chimney
Literature
Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, pp. 16-18 (for the present example illustrated)
Alastair Duncan, Tiffany: Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2007, p. 6 (for the present example illustrated)
Alastair Duncan, Tiffany: Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2007, p. 6 (for the present example illustrated)
Catalogue Note
The term “Tiffany lamp” is so synonymous with leaded glass shades and brilliantly colored floral subjects that we forget that there was an early moment when such ideas had not yet been conceived. This extravagant fuel lamp, the only one known of its kind, represents that moment in the early 1890s.
Bent bronze wire, bronze balls, pressed glass cabochons, and beach pebbles combine in this lamp to produce a rich, stunning effect, despite the simplicity of the materials themselves. The fuel canister is a basic globular shape (perhaps one produced commercially) that was then overlaid with ornamental wirework. Employing hot wire and bending it into these elaborate decorative schemes was part inventiveness and part a response to necessity—Tiffany did not yet have a furnace to cast elaborately ornamented designs in bronze.
The green and white marbleized glass cabochons are not unlike the blue marbleized tiles set in the fireplace of the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York. They are boldly variegated in pattern and color as though they were natural stones. Their veining and slightly irregular forms correspond to the pebbles used in the foot. This juxtaposition of real stones and glass cabochons was a ploy that Tiffany often used, especially in the decorative borders of his early leaded glass windows.
Even more germane are some of the fittings in the Henry O. Havemeyer House, executed about 1891. The filigree of twisted bronze wire and glass cabochons in this lamp recall the great chandelier that hung in the so-called Rembrandt Room, as well as the mosque-like lanterns that hung in the Painting Gallery. Equally pertinent is the mansion’s great door where pebbles, multiple strands of interlacing bronze wire, and panes of marbleized glass were worked together on the interior side to create a splendid effect. Visitors to the Havemeyer house, as well as to Tiffany’s display at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, were awed by the opulent, Byzantine richness of what he had created. All that extravagance and splendor is embodied in this early lamp.
MARTIN EIDELBERG, co-author of The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany (New York: Vendome Press), 2005 and author of Tiffany Favrile Glass and the Quest of Beauty (New York: Lillian Nassau), 2007 and Tiffany Favrile Pottery and the Quest of Beauty (New York: Lillian Nassau), 2010
Bent bronze wire, bronze balls, pressed glass cabochons, and beach pebbles combine in this lamp to produce a rich, stunning effect, despite the simplicity of the materials themselves. The fuel canister is a basic globular shape (perhaps one produced commercially) that was then overlaid with ornamental wirework. Employing hot wire and bending it into these elaborate decorative schemes was part inventiveness and part a response to necessity—Tiffany did not yet have a furnace to cast elaborately ornamented designs in bronze.
The green and white marbleized glass cabochons are not unlike the blue marbleized tiles set in the fireplace of the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York. They are boldly variegated in pattern and color as though they were natural stones. Their veining and slightly irregular forms correspond to the pebbles used in the foot. This juxtaposition of real stones and glass cabochons was a ploy that Tiffany often used, especially in the decorative borders of his early leaded glass windows.
Even more germane are some of the fittings in the Henry O. Havemeyer House, executed about 1891. The filigree of twisted bronze wire and glass cabochons in this lamp recall the great chandelier that hung in the so-called Rembrandt Room, as well as the mosque-like lanterns that hung in the Painting Gallery. Equally pertinent is the mansion’s great door where pebbles, multiple strands of interlacing bronze wire, and panes of marbleized glass were worked together on the interior side to create a splendid effect. Visitors to the Havemeyer house, as well as to Tiffany’s display at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, were awed by the opulent, Byzantine richness of what he had created. All that extravagance and splendor is embodied in this early lamp.
MARTIN EIDELBERG, co-author of The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany (New York: Vendome Press), 2005 and author of Tiffany Favrile Glass and the Quest of Beauty (New York: Lillian Nassau), 2007 and Tiffany Favrile Pottery and the Quest of Beauty (New York: Lillian Nassau), 2010