Tiffany Lamps

Tiffany Lamps: Everything You Always Wanted To Know...

Tiffany Studios Dragonfly Table Lamp Circa 1902

A Tiffany lamp is a type of lamp with many different types of glass shade. The most famous was the stained leaded glass lamp. Tiffany lamps are considered part of the Art Nouveau movement.

1 History
2 Production
3 Examples
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

History

The first Tiffany lamp was created around 1895. Beautiful in design and intricacy, each lamp was handmade by skilled craftsman, not mass or machine produced. It was not, as had been thought for over 100 years, Louis Comfort Tiffany, but Clara Driscoll who has finally been recognized as the master designer behind the most creative and valuable leaded glass lamps produced by the Tiffany Studios.[1]

Tiffany’s first business venture was an interior design firm in New York, for which he designed stained glass windows.

Most of his lamps can be grouped into one of seven specific categories: Irregular Upper and Lower Border, Favrile, Geometric,Transition to Flowers, Flowered Cone, and Flowered Globe lamps. The Irregular Upper and Lower Border lamps carry an openwork crown edge that helps to stimulate a branch, tree, or shrubbery. The Favrile category, which means handcrafted, identifies the first lamps Tiffany made with this label. His initials LCT, later replaced the Favrile stamp. The Geometric category, done primarily by the male craftsman, speaks for itself. The Tiffany craftsman used geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, rectangles, and ovals to form these patterns for these lamps. Next is the Transition to Flowers group, which is subdivided into the Flowered Cone and Globe lamps. All of these lamps follow a nature, or botanical, design using flowers, dragonflies, spiders with webs, butterflies, and peacock feathers. The difference within these two smaller categories is the difference in the lamp shapes, basically a cone and a globe.^[1]

Production

Aside from their categorization every lamp is prepared by using the Copper Foil method. First a pattern for the lamp is drawn out on a heavy piece of cardboard. Next a number and glass color is written on the pattern piece. After the pattern is drawn and labeled, the glass is laid over it and traced. Once the pattern is traced onto the glass, the pieces can be cut and ground to their correct shape. Next the pieces need to be cleaned so the copper foil can be applied to the edges. The copper foil solution allows the pieces to adhere together. After the lamp has been placed accordingly and it is fully bonded, the edges need to be soldered together for a firm hold. Finally after the lamp has been soldered it is cleaned to bring out its beauty.^[2]