Tiffany Studios

The Warshawsky Corporate Collection

Sotheby's New York, Tiffany Lamps from the Warshawsky Corporate Collection, June 5, 1996, lot 92

Private Collection

Sotheby's New York, December 5, 1998, lot 740

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany: Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, p. 62, no. 198 (for the model)

Paul Crist, Tiffany Lamps: A History, Santa Fe Springs, CA, 2023, p. 146, no. 6-7 (for the model)

Louis Tiffany was at the forefront of incorporating electrical fixtures into public spaces, working directly with Thomas Edison in lighting the Lyceum Theater in early 1885. He was, however, reluctant to fully commit his Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company to the electrical age and continued to focus on the production of gas and kerosene-fueled fixtures that featured blown Favrile glass shades. This policy suddenly shifted around 1897 and the exceptionally rare lamp offered here was one of the company’s earliest forays in creating electric lighting for private residences.

The construction of this Scarab lamp, one of only two known examples, is highly intriguing and informative. The finely cast bronze base is comprised of a domed foot supporting a slender column patinated in dark brown and enhanced with applied, tightly spiraled metal wire having a copper-brown finish. The wire continues seamlessly to form the basis of the spherical leaded glass shade. The design consists of four stylized scarabs, a popular theme in many of Tiffany’s designs, but produced in a very atypical fashion.

The more familiar leaded glass floral electroliers the company introduced to the public in their 1900 Lamps and Fixtures catalog were made with hundreds, if not thousands, of bits of hand-cut colored glass with lead lines that reinforced both the glass and the design.The Scarab lamp, however, was made just as the “Tiffany Girls” were beginning to experiment with the copper foil technique. So instead of utilizing small pieces, large, bold and dramatic sections of slightly rippled iridescent gold glass, some streaked with red and green, others with a “stretched” and crackled iridescence, were first bordered with copper foil and then leaded together. Oval transparent red “eyes” and cross-hatched openwork metal filigree over the insects’ abdomens complete the design. Unlike Tiffany’s later spherical shades that simply lift up in order to install a light bulb, this lamp features a hinged cover comprised of slightly more opalescent glass and ornate open metalwork that emulates overlapping scarab bodies.

This lamp, considered as a whole, is a beautiful and exceedingly rare object that provides a fascinating insight into the early stages of the evolution of Tiffany’s leaded glass lamps.