TIFFANY STUDIOS | "WISTERIA" TABLE LAMP

Lillian Nassau, New York

Private Collection, Switzerland

Christie's New York, December 10, 1998, lot 331

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany: Rebel in Glass, New York, 1964, pl. v

Dr. Egon Neustadt, The Lamps of Tiffany, New York, 1970, pp. 215-220

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany At Auction, New York, 1981, pp. 89 and 148

William Feldstein, Jr. and Alastair Duncan, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios, New York, 1983, p. 37

Alastair Duncan, Fin de Siècle Masterpieces from the Silverman Collection, New York, 1989, p. 40

Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany's Glass, Bronzes, Lamps: A Complete Collector's Guide, New York, 1989, p. 131

Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany: The Collected Works of Robert Koch, Atglen, PA, 2001, pp. 74, 242 and 284

Alastair Duncan, Louis C. Tiffany: The Garden Museum Collection, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004, pp. 292-293

Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, p. 107 

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2007, p. 67, no. 254

Martin Eidelberg, Nina Gray and Margaret K. Hofer, A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, London, 2007, p. 48

Timeless Beauty, The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Atglen, PA, 2016, p. 119

Margaret K. Hofer and Rebecca Klassen, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios: Nature Illuminated, New York, 2016, pp. 86-87

Evoking Impressionism

Tiffany's Painterly Expressions in Glass

The “Wisteria” lamp was one of the most ambitious and successful models produced by Tiffany Studios. Designed in 1901 by Clara Driscoll, within five years of its introduction the price for a Wisteria lamp was listed at $400, making it one of the most expensive lamps in Tiffany’s line. As revered as this luxury item was in the period, the Wisteria lamp is now widely recognized as an icon of American design and one of Tiffany Studios’ greatest accomplishments in leaded glass. Its complex pattern is comprised of nearly 2,000 individually cut and selected glass tiles. As a result, each Wisteria lamp possesses its own distinct character and color palette, despite being a standardized model.

True to nature, the Wisteria is generally executed in a blue and purple palette, but Tiffany’s glass selectors often exercised artistic license when it came to coloration. Such an intricate design afforded Tiffany’s craftsmen with ample opportunity to experiment with color, sometimes defying nature with their inclusion of unexpected colors like pink and aqua, as is the case in the present lot. The effect is incredibly impressionistic: the careful selection and placement of such a variety of hues allows the viewer’s eye to mix colors to create the distinct sense of pictorial depth. The overall effect achieved is that of layers upon layers of wisteria blossoms as they would occur in nature, receding into space and cascading with dynamic, graceful irregularity.

The present lot is a fascinating example due to both its beauty and the presence of an accession number on the base. The label, inscribed SL.69.75.1A/CHRYSLER, suggests the piece was at one time been in the collection of or exhibited at the Chrysler Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts. While records from this period do not exist, it comes as no surprise that a lamp of this caliber might have been included or displayed in such a prestigious context.