Tiffany Arabian Lamp

Louis Comfort Tiffany was undoubtedly the most influential and accomplished American decorative artist in the decades that spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Beyond glass, he worked in mediums that ranged from furniture and enameling to ceramics and metalware, with his Tiffany Studios producing highly collectible table lamps, vases, serveware and other objects.

The name Tiffany prompts thoughts of two things: splendid gifts in robin’s-egg blue boxes and exquisite stained glass. Charles Lewis Tiffany founded the former, and his son, Louis, is responsible for exemplars of the latter. 

By the time Louis Comfort Tiffany was born, the stationery and “fancy goods” emporium his father had established 11 years before had grown to become the most fashionable jewelry and luxury items store in New York. Tiffany fils declined to join the family business and pursued a career as an artist. He studied painting with several teachers, notably the scenic painter Samuel Colman, while spending long periods touring Europe and North Africa. Though he painted his entire career, visits to continental churches sparked a passionate interest in stained glass. Tiffany began experimenting with the material and in 1875 opened a glass factory-cum-laboratory in Corona, Queens — the core of what eventually became Tiffany Studios, a multimedia decorative-arts manufactory.

Tiffany developed a method in which colors were blended together in the molten state. Recalling the Old English word fabrile, meaning “hand-wrought,” he named the blown glass Favrile, a term that signified handmade glass of unique quality. In his glass designs, Tiffany embraced the emerging Art Nouveau movement and its sinuous, naturalistic forms and motifs. The pieces won Tiffany international fame. (Siegfried Bing, the Paris entrepreneur whose design store, L’Art Nouveau, gave the stylistic movement its name, was the leading European importer of Tiffany pieces.) 

By 1902, along with glass, Tiffany was designing stained-glass lamps and chandeliers as well as enameled metal vases, boxes and bowls, and items such as desk sets and candlesticks. Today such pieces epitomize the rich aesthetics of their era.

Antique Tiffany Studios table lamps are the most recognizable and the most prized. They range in price from $60,000 to upward of $2 million for intricate shade designs like the Dragonfly. Tiffany glass vases and bowls are generally priced from $1,000 to $30,000 depending on size, color, condition and form. Simpler accessories such as metal trays and small picture frames can fetch from $800 to $3,000. Tiffany design of any type is an emblem of taste and craftsmanship. As you will see on 1stDibs, Louis Comfort Tiffany ensured that each piece he and his company produced, magnificent or modest, was a work of art.

Find Louis Comfort Tiffany vases, serveware and other items on 1stDibs.

Well-crafted antique and vintage table lamps do more than provide light; the right fixture-and-table combination can add a focal point or creative element to any interior.

Proper table lamps have long been used for lighting our most intimate spaces. Perfect for lighting your nightstand or reading nook, table lamps play an integral role in styling an inviting room. In the years before electricity, lamps used oil. Today, a rewired 19th-century vintage lamp can still provide a touch of elegance for a study.

After industrial milestones such as mass production took hold in the Victorian era, various design movements sought to bring craftsmanship and innovation back to this indispensable household item. Lighting designers affiliated with Art Deco, which originated in the glamorous roaring ’20s, sought to celebrate modern life by fusing modern metals with dark woods and dazzling colors in the fixtures of the era. The geometric shapes and gilded details of vintage Art Deco table lamps provide an air of luxury and sophistication that never goes out of style.

After launching in 1934, Anglepoise lamps soon became a favorite among modernist architects and designers, who interpreted the fixture as “a machine for lighting,” just as Le Corbusier had reimagined the house as “a machine for living in.” The popular task light owed to a collaboration between a vehicle-suspension engineer by the name of George Carwardine and a West Midlands springs manufacturer, Herbert Terry & Sons. 

Some mid-century modern table lamps, particularly those created by the likes of Joe Colombo and the legendary lighting artisans at Fontana Arte, bear all the provocative hallmarks associated with Space Age design. Sculptural and versatile, the Louis Poulsen table lamps of that period were revolutionary for their time and still seem innovative today. 

If you are looking for something more contemporary, industrial table lamps are demonstrative of a newly chic style that isn’t afraid to pay homage to the past. They look particularly at home in any rustic loft space amid exposed brick and steel beams.

Before you buy a desk lamp or table lamp for your living room, consider your lighting needs. The Snoopy lamp, designed in 1967, or any other “banker’s lamp” (shorthand for the Emeralite desk lamps patented by H.G. McFaddin and Company), provides light at a downward angle that is perfect for writing, while the Fontana table lamp and the beloved Grasshopper lamp by Greta Magnusson-Grossman each yield a soft and even glow. Some table lamps require lampshades to be bought separately.

Whether it’s a classic antique Tiffany table lamp, a Murano glass table lamp or even a bold avant-garde fixture custom-made by a contemporary design firm, the right table lamp can completely transform a room. Find the right one for you on 1stDibs.