Macklowe Gallery Decorative Arts Desk Sets

Tiffany Studios’ Pond Lily Desk Set is a rare model, with only three extant sets known. The set is decorated with a dazzling array of lily pads, lily buds, dragonflies, and moths. The dragonfly and moth was a leitmotif of the Art Nouveau, but Louis Tiffany encountered the creatures and explored their form and significance throughout his childhood and artistic life, beginning as a youngster who sketched au plein air in the woods and wetlands surrounding his father’s summer house. At his Laurelton Hall estate, an artwork of nature coaxed into form over decades, Tiffany observed these insects in the teeming saltwater marshes and wetlands of Oyster Bay. The crown jewel of his Laurelton Hall garden was a water lily pond filled with varieties of colored water lilies, a novelty that debuted at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Tiffany proceeded to make a series of designs based on the pond lily which he displayed to much acclaim in the 1902 Turin Prima Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna. Product Details: Item #: T-21399 Artist: Tiffany Studios New York Country: United States Circa: 1905 Materials: Patinated Bronze Signed: blotter ends, inkstand, calendar frame, pen tray and rocker blotter each impressed "Tiffany Studios New York"; the inkstand, pen tray, rocker blotter and blotter ends further impressed with firm's respective model numbers Literature: Martin Eidelberg, Nina Gray and Margaret K. Hofer, A New Light on Tiffany...

A pair of gilt bronze “Zodiac” desk blotter ends by Tiffany Studios New York. The blotter ends each feature intricate pseudo-Celtic patterning intersperse...