Joseph Briggs for Tiffany Studios

Macklowe Gallery, New York, 1993

Alastair Duncan, Martin Eidelberg and Neil Harris, Masterworks of Louis Comfort Tiffany, London, 1989, p. 55 (for a related example)

Alastair Duncan, Fin de Siècle Masterpieces from the Silverman Collection, New York, 1989, pp. 10 and 65 (for a related example)

Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Louis Comfort Tiffany at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1998, p. 91 (for a related example)

Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany: The Collected Works of Robert Koch, Atglen, PA, 2001, cover and p. 206 (for a related example)

William Warmus, The Essential Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2001, p. 86

John Loring, Louis Comfort Tiffany at Tiffany and Company, New York, 2002, p. 194 (for a related example)

Alastair Duncan, Louis C. Tiffany: The Garden Museum Collection, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004, p. 387 (for a related example)

Paul E. Doros, The Art Glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2013, p. 187 (for the present lot illustrated)

Joseph Briggs (1873-1937), a native of Accrington, England, came to the United States in 1891 as a trained engraver and in need of a job. He saw a Tiffany Glass and Company want ad and applied for a position as a stained-glass window designer. Briggs went to the firm’s Manhattan headquarters to be interviewed but failed to be hired. Dejectedly leaving the building, he immediately ran into Louis Tiffany who, after learning of Briggs’ rejection, asked him to “sketch something Scriptural” with a few available crayons. Briggs’ depiction of St. Peter was so proficient and compelling that Tiffany hired him on the spot. That began a career with the company that continued uninterrupted until Briggs’ death.

Briggs rose through the ranks, first becoming the head of the Mosaic Department and later being appointed Louis Tiffany’s chief assistant. Although the majority of his time was spent with mosaics and assisting Tiffany, Briggs had his own workroom and fashioned a very limited number of carved wood objects, including the rare Scarab humidor offered here. They were originally listed in the Tiffany and Company 1905 Blue Book as “tobacco jars, carved wood and Favrile glass, $25 to $30.” They last appear in the 1912 catalog as “richly carved and Favrile Glass

tobacco boxes” and priced as high as $60.

The Egyptian motif is readily apparent, as two large iridescent gold Favrile glass scarab beetles, with ornately carved legs and wings, are pushing a gilded ball of dung that cleverly serves as the cover’s hinge. A beautiful section of lightly iridescent brown and pale-yellow Cypriote glass, that gently imitates the wood’s whorled grain, is finely set into a natural protrusion. The box is a wonderful amalgamation of Louis Tiffany’s love of ancient themes interpreted through the skills of a devoted master craftsman.

–PD