Nassau County Museum of Art: Spotlight on a Louis Comfort Tiffany Lamp

Spotlight on a Tiffany Lamp. American artist Louis Comfort Tiffany started his career as a painter then moved on to the medium of stained glass. His studio, Tiffany Studios, designed hundreds of stained glass lamps between the years of 1890 and 1930. An icon of the Art Nouveau movement, a typical Tiffany lamp is composed of a bronze stand topped with a stained glass shade. These iconic stained glass lamps were created by soldering together small pieces of colored glass to create floral, fauna, and geometric patterns. Tiffany and his staff of talented artists, many of whom were women, often took inspiration from the theme of nature. The design and production of lampshades were primarily accomplished within the women's glass cutting department. Tiffany established the department at his studio in 1892, allowing women for the first time to cut and select glass for windows and mosaics alongside the men in his studio. Tiffany employed six women at his glass house in Kelowna, New York. By 1897, Tiffany had between 40 and 50 women employed in his glass workshop. Today, we will explore one of the six lamps on loan from the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass. These magnificent works are on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art as part of our La Belle Epoque exhibition. The lamp we will explore today is approximately two and a half feet in height. It is titled Daffodil Library Lamp, dated 1905. I will first describe the bronze base that the stained glass shade sits upon. The base is approximately one and a half feet high and is composed of a tall stem which appears to grow out of a circular base. The stem, two inches in diameter and nine inches in height, has seven incised vertical lines which end in spiral forms reminiscent of a fiddle head. The round base that holds the stem is eight inches in diameter and sits upon four small feet which raise the lamp up from its display base by one inch. Encircling the base is a pattern of 12 raised convex petal-like forms. If I were to touch the base, I would feel the cool smooth bronze and the incised lines of the stems and petals. I will now describe the shade. The shape of the shade is a wide conical form with a flattened point. The top part of the shade is approximately five inches in diameter with the bottom of the shade measuring 16 inches in width. As the title indicates, the motif of this lamp are daffodils. The orientation of the flower to stem is inverted with multiple blooms ringing the bottom edge of the lamp. The flower stems jut upward towards the top of the shade. The stained glass daffodils have overlapping petals that create volume and form and range in colors from warm yellow, peach, orange, and golden hues. Stems and leaves are fabricated with spotted glass the color of moss and celery. The irregular pigmentation gives the impression of dappled sunlight. Peeking out from behind the stems are irregular pieces of gray and sky blue glass like the sky before a spring rain. At the bottom of the shade below the flowers are three rows of glass. Rectangles arranged in a staggered brick- If I were to touch the shade I would feel the raised black outlines that encircle each individual piece of glass. To create the shade artisans fit the pieces of cut glass into flexible lead canes which are strips of lead shaped like miniature eye beams. The glass pieces are placed on either side of the eye and soldered and mitered at the corners. The brilliant colors of the shade are illuminated by three light bulbs visible only when peering under the shade. The use of incandescent light bulbs and the stained glass shades used to embellish their harsh light are the results of a partnership between Louis Comfort Tiffany and American inventor Thomas Edison.