Tiffany’s Vision — Withstanding The Test Of Time
The last part of Tiffany’s career was characterized by successful, though mass produced lines of more “modernist” design. Surprisingly, his biography, commissioned and published in 1912, makes almost no mention his lamps. So, at the age of 64, with his legacy written, Tiffany’s daily involvement with the company was on the wane. Lamps of stamped metal were produced in quantity. But these and similar designs, with cleaner, modern lines were not the prized lamps of his original vision. Nor were they ones that his craftsmen and women, had traditionally produced.
Yet, the old nature based models were left in production and special orders were filled when needed. Of the glass shades being produced during this period, the ornate leaded glass shades still comprised over half. However over time, production decreased and Louis C. Tiffany Furnaces was dissolved in April of 1924 and replace by the A. Douglas Nash Company. It is thought that the leaded glass division was closed in 1924 as well.
Surprisingly, Tiffany leaded glass lamps continued to sell from back stock when Tiffany Studios filed for bankruptcy in 1932. Though Tiffany died in 1933, the company put out a price list and photographs of eighty-five lamps, the remains of old stock. A number of which were leaded floral shade designs from ten years earlier. It had taken that long for the stock to dwindle.
At this time, the slowly swinging pendulum of style was already beginning to show signs of once again seeing the value of Tiffany’s work. A 1933 article by Philip Johnson, a proponent of Modernism himself, reflected on the shallowness of fashion, and its effects on true artistic vision, “In most houses there are still a few such pieces—perhaps a Tiffany-glass lampshade, a bud vase, or a bronze lady…These objects are now regarded with fashionable horror. Such horrors are, however, unjustified. It is only proper perspective on the period that is lacking.”
Twenty-five years later in 1958, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York hosted a Tiffany Retrospective which included some of Tiffany’s light fixtures. This was followed by an Art Nouveau exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art which included a Wisteria lamp. This reignited the same fervor for Tiffany’s art that occurred in 1900.
Over the next dozen years collectors began to search out Tiffany lamps with greater and greater devotion. As soon as January 1971, a seven light Pond Lily lamp was sold for $1,900 and a ten-light lily went for $3,750. In April a Dragonfly lamp sold for $2,500. But the most by far the most sought after designs were the large floral lamps. A Tiffany Wisteria which originally sold for $400 in 1906 was auctioned off at the Chicago Art Galleries for $18,500 in November 1970.
In December 2008, Sotheby’s Antiquities sale in New York auctioned a number of Tiffany lamps. A Peony lamp went to an American collector for $750,000, almost double the high estimate. A Fruit lamp went as expected, for $550,000. Finally a 79” Magnolia floor lamp sold for $1,762,500 to a mysteriously anonymous buyer.
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