Tiffany Studios

Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, April 1, 1977, lot 152
Private Collection, New York
Sotheby's New York, December 14, 2007, lot 338
The Geyer Collection
Sotheby's New York, The Geyer Collection: Masterworks of Tiffany and Prewar Design, December 11, 2018, lot 55
Acquired from the above by the present owner

William Feldstein, Jr. and Alastair Duncan, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios, New York, 1983, p. 89 (for the shade)
Alastair Duncan, Louis C. Tiffany: The Garden Museum Collection, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004, p. 300 (for the shade)
Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, p. 98 (for the shade)
Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, pp. 126, no. 488 (for the base) and 221, no. 867 (for the shade)

This exceptionally rare lamp was one of the later designs produced by Tiffany Studios, as its 1999 model number would indicate. The first example was made around 1913 and there is documented evidence that a Maple Leaf table lamp, with a gilt finish, was made for the company’s inventory as late as November 1923. Despite this approximate ten-year period of production, fewer than five examples are presently known to exist. This perhaps might be due to the firm’s relatively high selling price of $240 for the shade alone.

Louis C. Tiffany had utilized the maple leaf theme as early as 1880 when he designed a potiere that was produced by Candace Wheeler for his interior decorating business. He also planted the tree liberally when landscaping both The Briars and Laurelton Hall. It is unknown why the design was not utilized until relatively late in the firm’s history, but the eventual motif exhibits all of Tiffany’s supreme artistic talents.

The large domed shade depicts an early morning scene in spring, when the maple tree’s foliage has just fully developed. In various sizes and shapes, the finely detailed leaves are primarily in tones of green, but are enlivened with hints of powder blue, teal and light yellow enhanced with gentle mottling. The leading of the leaves cleverly forms the veining. Below the leaves and encircling the lower rim are three bands of samaras, or seed pods, in varying shades of green and amber. The lowest band shows only the top half of the pods, as if they are almost ready to detach themselves from the slender branches and helicopter downwards to the ground. All this is on a background that transitions from a fiery amber-streaked gold to a pale yellow, beautifully simulating the rising sun and the break of dawn.

The Maple Leaf lamp is one of Tiffany’s finest motifs, subtle yet highly imaginative and exquisite in its intricacy and tonality. This example provides a rare opportunity to examine, and appreciate, a remarkable model that infrequently appears on the market.

—Paul Doros