Tiffany Studios

Private Collection, New York, circa 1970

Private Collection, Washington

Thence by descent

Sotheby's New York, December 12, 2018, lot 314

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Hugh McKean, The "Lost" Treasures of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 1980, no. 232 (for a related pitcher)

Alastair Duncan, Louis C. Tiffany: The Garden Museum Collection, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004, p. 372

Timeless Beauty: The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Atglen, Pennsylvania, 2016, p. 125 (for a related pitcher)

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, p. 489, no. 1981

Tiffany’s line of fancy goods offered a bounty of objects for every practical need, executed in an array of design motifs to suit every taste. They varied in both mechanical and aesthetic complexity, showcasing the firm’s wide range of skilled techniques and Tiffany’s own diverse sources of artistic inspiration. The present humidor and cigar lighter are examples of the great extent to which Tiffany would go to lavish his objects with rich, sumptuous detail, making treasures of the utilitarian. Their highly patterned surfaces depicting conventionalized dragonflies and upright arrowhead leaves and flowers are not unlike those seen in French design books like Eugène Grasset’s La Plante et ses applications ornementales.  The scheme is further enhanced by the addition of silver and gold plating, as well as green enameling. Unlike the spontaneity and bold coloring of the works from the Enamel Department at Tiffany Studios, here the enameling is cool and even in tone. Like patina, it carefully reinforces the relief design. The modernity of the patterns, the richness of materials, and the elaborate finishes suggest the years around the turn-of-the century when Tiffany Studios spared no expense.