Tiffany Studios

Lady Lucie McMillan, Nairobi

Private Collection, Nairobi, acquired from the above, 1957

Thence by descent to the present owner

William Feldstein, Jr. and Alastair Duncan, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios, New York, 1983, pp. 48-49 (for the shade)

Egon Neustadt, The Lamps of Tiffany, New York, 1990, p. 149-150 (for the shade)

Alastair Duncan, Louis C. Tiffany: The Garden Museum Collection, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004, pp. 17 (for an in situ photograph of the shade)

Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, p. 149 (for the shade)

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, pp. 93, no. 370 and 168, no. 682 (for the shade); 95, no. 364 and 365, and 221, no. 867 (for the base)

Lady Lucie McMillan, from whom the present owner acquired this “Tulip” Table Lamp, was an American woman, a British Lady, and a longtime resident of Nairobi, Kenya. A notorious adventurer who kept wild cats on her property and was said to have killed a lion, Lady McMillan hosted and honored many important international visitors, including Theodore Roosevelt, Princess Elizabeth and The Duke of Edinburgh. After her husband’s untimely passing, she created Nairobi’s beloved McMillian Memorial Library in his name with funding from the Carnegie Foundation, close family friends of the McMillans. She is remembered for her larger-than-life presence and her philanthropic efforts in Kenya in the first half of the century.