Tiffany Studios New York "Zodiac" Inkwell
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Tiffany Studios New York "Zodiac" Inkwell
About the Item
- Creator:Tiffany Studios (Maker),Louis Comfort Tiffany (Workshop/Studio)
- Dimensions:Height: 2.25 in (5.72 cm)Width: 4.25 in (10.8 cm)Depth: 4.25 in (10.8 cm)
- Style:Art Nouveau (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1900
- Condition:
- Seller Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:Seller: T-208831stDibs: LU885432089722
Louis Comfort Tiffany
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 Comfort Tiffany, is responsible for exemplars of the latter. Beyond glass, the younger Tiffany worked in mediums that ranged from furniture and enameling to ceramics and metalware. 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.
By the time 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. 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.
Tiffany Studios
The hand-crafted kerosene and early electric lighting fixtures created at Tiffany Studios now rank among the most coveted decorative objects in the world. Tiffany designs of any kind are emblematic of taste and craftsmanship, and Tiffany glass refers to far more than stained-glass windows and decorative glass objects. The iconic multimedia manufactory’s offerings include stained-glass floor lamps, chandeliers and enameled metal vases. The most recognizable and prized of its works are antique Tiffany Studios table lamps.
The name Tiffany generally prompts thoughts of two things: splendid gifts in robin’s-egg blue boxes and exquisite stained glass. In 1837, Charles Lewis Tiffany founded the former — Tiffany & Co., one of America’s most prominent purveyors of luxury goods — while his son, Louis Comfort Tiffany, is responsible for exemplars of the latter.
Louis was undoubtedly the most influential and accomplished American decorative artist in the decades that spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rather than join the family business, 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.
In his glass designs, Tiffany embraced the emerging Art Nouveau movement and its sinuous, naturalistic forms and motifs. 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.
The lion’s share of credit for Tiffany Studios table lamps and other fixtures has gone to Louis. However, it was actually Clara Driscoll (1861–1944), an Ohio native and head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department for 17 years, who was the genius behind the Tiffany lamps that are most avidly sought by today’s collectors. A permanent gallery of Tiffany lamps at the New-York Historical Society celebrates the anonymous women behind the desirable fixtures.
Find antique Tiffany Studios lamps, decorative glass objects and other works on 1stDibs.
- Tiffany Studios New York "Zodiac" Match Box HolderBy Tiffany Studios, Louis Comfort TiffanyLocated in New York, NYA gilt bronze “Zodiac” match box holder by Tiffany Studios New York. The match box holder features intricate pseudo-Celtic patterning interspersed wit...Category
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- Tiffany Studios New York "Damascene Harp" Desk LampBy Tiffany Studios, Louis Comfort TiffanyLocated in New York, NYThis desk lamp by Tiffany Studios, dating from circa 1910, features a damascene favrile glass shade on an adjustable patinated bronze harp base. With dichroi...Category
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- Tiffany Studios New York "Turteback Tile" ChandelierBy Tiffany Studios, Louis Comfort TiffanyLocated in New York, NYRippling undulations in gold iridescence and soft, organic lines dominate this ethereal but weighty composition, an exceptional example of a Tiffany Studios New York "Turtleback Tile" chandelier. Three tiers of vertically oriented rectangular Turtleback tiles with rounded corners graduate in size, with substantially sized tiles decorating the bottom-most tier and the apex of the domed shade featuring tightly clustered tiles in miniature. Sumptuous and romantically uneven borders frame each tile, accentuating their unique silhouettes and adding a dark, matte element to contrast the bright, shimmering gold that dominates the shade. Item #: L-20333 Artist: Tiffany Studios New York Country: United States Circa: 1900 Size: 18.5" diameter Materials: Patinated Bronze, Leaded Glass Signed: "Tiffany Studios" Literature: A similar chandelier is pictured in Tiffany Lamps and Metalware: An illustrated reference to over 2000 models by Alastair Duncan, Woodbridge: Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1988, p. 281, plate 109 Macklowe Gallery Curators notes: he same model was on display at the Cooper Hewitt Museum's Passion for the Exotic: Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lockwood De Forest...Category
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Price Upon Request - Tiffany Studios New York Enameled Copper "Olive" Covered BoxBy Tiffany Studios, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stonebridge Glass Co.Located in New York, NYThis Tiffany Studios New York covered box by Louis Comfort Tiffany, covered with an enamel "Olive" motif, was executed by the Enamelware Department of The Stonebridge Glass Company in New York. The stoic composition is primarily composed of richly enameled copper, with the cover and body of this rare piece sharing decoration of subtly-hued olives, with purple-brown copper branches and deep green leaves. While the rarity of the object itself makes it an incredibly collectible item, the easy beauty of the composition also makes it an instant treasure. Artist: Tiffany Studios New York Circa: 1905 Dimensions: 5.25" height, 6.5" diameter Materials: Repoussé copper, Enamel and counter enamel Signed: "Louis C. Tiffany and impressed SC 332" Provenance: Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York, Private Collection, circa 1965, thence by descent to the present owners Literature: Box pictured in Behind the Scenes of Tiffany Glassmaking: The Nash Notebooks, by Martin Eidelberg and Nancy McClelland, New York, 2001, pp. 21 and 178 (for the model executed in pottery); Box also pictured in Louis C. Tiffany: The Garden Museum Collection, by Alastair Duncan, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004, p. 466 (for the model executed in pottery) and p. 471 (for the model executed in bronze pottery)Category
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- Tiffany Studios New York "Peony" Table LampBy Tiffany Studios, Louis Comfort TiffanyLocated in New York, NYTiffany’s “Peony” table lamp was a work grounded in naturalism but reaching for the divine. With a shade of resplendent blooms and a mosaic base evoking the hallowed ground of church floors, Tiffany’s peony lamp demonstrates his foundation in both Art nouveau and ecclesiastical art. To depict his multi-hued bouquet, Tiffany depicted two different cultivars, a Greek peony, and a Japanese peony. Tiffany used burgundy glass streaked with lapis to express the richness of the Greek Peony. Favored by neoclassical artists for their symmetry and simplicity, Tiffany featured the bloom in the architecture of his country estate. To represent the candy-striped Japanese peony Shima Nishiki, Tiffany used cream glass streaked with fuschia. The shade elegantly depicts different stages of growth from the bud, first bloom, peak bloom, to wilting. When peony petals wilt, their veins darken, and their form puckers. Tiffany’s glass selectors chose a stone textured glass called granite glass to express the wilting of the petals and their pronounced venation. The background and border of the shade is a golden amber, streaked with magenta and blue. The top-down perspective of the peony with a dirt background was a type of painting called “Rasenstück”, a detailed study of a piece of turf. The crux of the Rasenstück was the elevation of the humble. Popularized in the nineteenth century by the American Pre-Raphaelites, the movement believed in the idea of "truth to nature". The principle encouraged painters to capture the natural world as truthfully as possible, not romanticizing what they saw. In these nature studies, painters depicted flowers and trees in the soil from which they grew. While sublime on its own, the shade and base taken together paint a picture of Tiffany’s Japanese garden. Peonies imported from the far east bordered serene ponds. A frieze of turtleback tiles hypnotizes the viewers with its scarlet glow, evoking the red flash of a sunset, as seen through a field of cattails, rendered in bronze. Below it, the row of cat tails blends into a mosaic of red, yellow, and green glass. While Tiffany’s chief designer Clara Driscoll is most famous for her naturalistic lamp designs, the bread and butter of Tiffany Studios was its ecclesiastical department. Red, yellow, and green colorways were widely used in the depiction of Baroque angels, whose wings were modeled after birds of paradise. As hunters removed their legs upon sale, many believed they neither ate nor drank, and instead floated ethereally like angels. A lamp such as this epitomizes Tiffany’s understanding of his artistic vision in the context of the entire history of artistic expression. Since falling in love with glass at age twelve in the cathedrals of Chartres, light itself became a representation of divinity. A contemporary critic described Tiffany’s mosaics...Category
Early 20th Century American Table Lamps
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Price Upon Request
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