Tiffany Studios

Corinthian Studios, San Jose, California
Beatrice Weiss, Florida
Grady Cain, Mechanicsburg, Ohio
John W. Mecom, Jr., Houston, Texas
Sotheby's New York, Highly Important Tiffany Lamps from the Collection of John W. Mecom, Jr., Houston, Texas, April 22, 1995, lot 66
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Dr. Egon Neustadt, The Lamps of Tiffany, New York, 1970, p. 155 (for the base)
Art Nouveau from Maryland Collections, exh. cat., Baltimore Museum of Art, July 10-September 2, 1979, n.p., no. 50 (for the shade in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art)
William Feldstein, Jr. and Alastair Duncan, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios, New York, 1983, pp. 102 (for the base), 122-123 (for the shade in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art) and 125 (for the base)
Vivienne Couldrey, The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Edison, NJ, 2001, p. 91 (for the shade)
Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, pp. 83 (for the shade and base pairing) and 197 (for the base)
Martin Eidelberg, Nina Gray and Margaret K. Hofer, A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, exh. cat., New-York Historical Society, 2007, p. 69 (for the base)
Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, pp. 82, nos. 306-307 (for the base) and 190, nos. 751-752 (for the shade)

Louis Tiffany was an early proponent of electric lighting, first creating electrified fixtures in 1885 for the Lyceum Theater in New York City and, early the following year, for the newly-completed Tiffany Mansion on the corner of Madison Avenue and 72^nd Street: “One of its loveliest features is only appreciable at night, that being the unique and beautiful management of the lights, which are the Edison electric, enclosed in stained glass globes.” These globes and shades gradually evolved from simple geometric patterns to being directly influenced by Tiffany’s increasingly famous leaded glass windows, with their vivid depictions of flowering plants, vines and trees. It took, however, approximately 25 years before Tiffany was able to transform a true landscape scene into a shade suitable for a lamp.

The first attempt came in 1908. At that time, a Tiffany Studios Christmas advertisement promoted an “especially attractive shade hexagonal in shape, wrought in fine pieces of Favrile Glass, with landscape medallions.” That model, number 622, was an apparent attempt to appeal to proponents of influential architect Ralph Cram and his campaign for the Gothic Revival style. The design was produced for only a very short period and few examples exist.

Even rarer is the helmet-shaped landscape shade, model number 1550. Probably designed shortly after the medallion version, the shade offered here was likely the first of only three known examples, one of which is in the permanent collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. The motif is obviously based on Frederick Wilson’s “River of Life” window, a design copyrighted by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company in 1899. As in the window, the shade depicts, with sections of granite, rippled and dichroic glass, blossoming indigo iris on a lush green ground at the foot of large green-streaked brown tree trunks. In the midground are smaller Italian cypress trees on the banks of a blue and turquoise body of water. Unlike a typical “River of Life” window, however, which illustrates a static, fixed moment, this shade brilliantly represents three distinct times of day: sunrise, with a golden yellow background; midday, with its mauve-streaked blue sky, and sunset, signified by a yellow-tinged amber ground.

The magnificent base is the ideal foil to the shade. Included in the company’s 1906 Price List as “355. Mosaic and turtle back lamp, large lights inside,” it retailed for $300, only $100 less than an entire Wisteria lamp. Beautifully cast in bronze enhanced with a rich brown patina having green highlights, the lower half is embellished with columns of inset mosaics, the tesserae in shades of crimson, ruby, yellow and gold. The upper section is augmented with a band of eight large iridescent green turtle-back tiles that, when lit from the interior, wonderfully complements the shade. Above this band, a ring of smaller irregular rectangles was cast that mimic the turtle-back tiles. As a unit, this exceedingly rare lamp is truly special.

Paul Doros