Tiffany Studios

Samuel Bowne Parsons, Jr., Flushing, New York, commissioned from Tiffany Studios, by repute

Thence by descent

Private Collection, acquired from the above, circa 1978

Acquired from the above by the present owner

William Feldstein, Jr. and Alastair Duncan, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios, New York, 1983, pp. 74-75 and 100-101 (for the shade)

Alastair Duncan, Martin Eidelberg and Neil Harris, Masterworks of Louis Comfort Tiffany, London, 1989, p. 114. fig. 50 (for the shade)

Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, pp. 8-9 and 91-95 (for the shade)

Margaret K. Hofer and Rebecca Klassen, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios: Nature Illuminated, New York, 2016, pp. 80-81 (for the shade); 40 (for the base)

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, pp. 225, nos. 878-880 (for the shade); 228, no. 890 (for the base)

The Magnolia floor lamp has long been revered as one of Tiffany Studios’ most grand and impressive designs. Due to its rarity, it has been an exceedingly long period since the model has appeared on the market, and at least two decades since an example of this exceptional beauty and artistic quality has been offered. A list of collectors who have owned an example is equally iconic, including a young Steve Jobs, who felt his own Magnolia lamp should be the primary, and only, decorative element in his living room. The lamp offered here is a quintessential example that justly supports the model’s legendary status.

Magnolias are among the oldest known flowering plants, having existed for at least 100 million years. Evolving even before the creation of bees, magnolias developed to be pollinated by beetles. The tree has become a harbinger of spring, blossoming as early as March in regions stretching from Asia to Europe and North America. With stunning large pink, purple, red, yellow or white blossoms opening in the morning to promote pollination, the tree has long inspired artists. It has also come to have significance to Christians, the flower symbolically representing beauty, virtue and divine love. In Victorian times, the blossom signified eternal affection. The Chinese believed magnolias represented purity and nobility, the Japanese dignity and perseverance, and both Asian societies used the tree for medicinal purposes. 

Magnolias had an obvious appeal for Louis Comfort Tiffany, an artist well versed in Christian theology in addition to Asian cultures. He planted two species of the native variety on the grounds of his Laurelton Hall estate: the Great Leaf variety (Magnolia macrophylla) with its large white flowers, and the smaller but more dramatic Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia soulangeana), featuring vivid white and pink blossoms. Both species of the tree were frequently represented in leaded glass windows produced by his firms. Perhaps the most impressive were the three-panel window originally installed in Tiffany’s 72^nd Street mansion and now displayed at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (Winter Park, Florida) and a single panel made for the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle that is in the permanent collection of the Stieglitz Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts in St Petersburg, Russia.

It is highly probable that Agnes Northrop (1857-1953) was responsible for designing the company’s magnificent Magnolia lamp shade. Although Clara Driscoll, the head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department, is credited with most of Tiffany’s floral shades, there is considerable evidence to support the Northrop attribution. There exist several photographs taken by Northrop of flowering magnolias and the Morse Museum also has in its collection a detailed water color design sketch of a blossoming tree branch signed by her. Furthermore, the two aforementioned leaded glass windows featuring magnolias were both designed by Northrop, the latter of which she was awarded a silver medal by the exposition’s judges.

The Magnolia shade was first introduced by Tiffany Studios around 1910 and, with its 28-inch diameter and costing $300, was the largest and second-most expensive shade listed in the company’s 1913 price guide. Although likely produced until the mid-1920s, the model is surprisingly rare and the example offered here is truly exceptional. The large domed shade is replete with a multitude of large magnolias depicted in a variety of stages, from plum and emerald buds, to white-streaked green and red-tinged turquoise blossoms about to unfurl, to fully opened flowers in shades of pink and opalescent white with unusual brown and crimson centers. These flowers are extraordinary, many of them being composed with rippled and drapery glass that gives the design a three-dimensionality and sense of motion infrequently seen in Tiffany’s other shades. The blossoms, as well as the numerous curvaceous chestnut branches, are placed against a rich mottled blue and sapphire background that is equally incredible.

The patinated floor bronze base also bears noting. In the “Chased Pod” design and with a “pig-tail” finial, the platform is wonderfully cast in a stylized floral motif and raised on four curved feet. In addition, the short column supporting the light cluster is cast with a very subtle design. This is a highly unusual feature that, while not immediately obvious, adds an unexpected touch of elegance.

The lamp’s provenance supplies another intriguing connection to Agnes Northrop. It was reputedly originally owned by Samuel Bowne Parsons, Jr. (1844-1923), a major American landscapist who at one time was the apprentice, and later the partner of, Calvert Vaux. Parsons was responsible for several important landscaping commissions including Balboa Park (San Diego, California), the redesign of Union Square Park in Manhattan and a section of Van Cortland Park (Bronx, New York). He also worked for a time at his family’s plant nursery in Flushing, New York, the firm being responsible for supplying Frederick Law Omstead and Vaux with numerous rare trees and plants when they were co-designing Central and Prospect Parks in New York City. The nursery was situated a short distance from where Agnes Northrop lived and she frequently visited the Parsons’ and other nurseries in the area to further her botanical knowledge by photographing and sketching the varieties that most interested her.

The glass selected for this shade has rarely been equaled in terms of color, texture and composition. This lamp, in its entirety, presents a notable opportunity for all collectors and admirers of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany to examine a very special object that so clearly and superbly reflects his design genius and supreme artistry, as well as Agnes Northrop’s superlative talents in bringing Tiffany’s concepts to fruition.

– PAUL DOROS