We’ve all heard of Tiffany Lamps, but do you know what one is? Do you know why they are coveted items? Do you know how they got their start? Sit back and learn the history of Tiffany lamps with the beautiful, handcrafted, stained-glass.
As you may have already concluded, Tiffany lamps
Charles Lewis Tiffany, of Tiffany and Co. the jewelry store, had a son Louis Comfort Tiffany, who was an expert craftsman and a successful painter, photographer and gardener.
In the 1880s Tiffany decided he now wanted to use his various skills to turn the interior of houses into pieces of fine art. Taking the left over pieces of stained glass windows he had worked on, he began to design the first of the Tiffany Lamps.
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While installing Tiffany Lamps in a movie theater, Tiffany met Thomas Edison who suggested they work together to produce the Tiffany Lamps with electric fixtures. The first of the Tiffany Lamps were very geometric, as in they used basic shapes such as squares, triangles and circles in their mosaic designs.
These first few Tiffany Lamps are usually referred to as Favrile, meaning hand-crafted, and is also the name under which Tiffany patented the design.
As Tiffany Lamps became increasingly popular during the early 1900s, Tiffany hired on workers who became known as the “Tiffany Girls”.
The Tiffany Girls were all unmarried women who worked on design and glass cutting for the lamps in the Tiffany Women’s Glass Cutting Department.
Clara Driscoll earned her way to becoming the director and designer of many of Tiffany’s most popular designs to this day. The Tiffany Lamp designs Dragonfly, Wisteria, Peony, and the Daffodil were some of her most remembered designs.
During the late 1920s the Tiffany Lamps popularity began to dwindle because the modernists felt the lamps were too ornate for the modern styles. In 1930 Tiffany Lamps closed its doors and three years later Louis Comfort Tiffany passed away.
The Tiffany Lamps remained unpopular for 20 years until their comeback in the 1950s. Their popularity and appeal since has grown, creating many Tiffany-inspired lamp designs, and two original Tiffany lamps sold at auction for $2 million a piece.
Still though, why are they so popular? Why would someone pay $2 million dollars for one lamp?
The answer is simply…Quality and craftsmanship. Tiffany Lamps were designed to the highest standards. Each glass piece was cut to precisely the right size and each piece was soldered to each other creating one large weld that encompassed the entire shade.
After the soldering was done, the shade was cleaned of all dust, solder, and residue to ensure the brightest colors possible. Some of the earlier lamps were made using blown glass while others where made by melting down glass and adding specific chemicals to create the desired colors.
Another answer…Rarity. Authentic Tiffany Lamps are hard to come by. Partially because of the span of 20 years when they were unpopular but also because they are over 100 years old now, and so many Tiffany-inspired lamps and outright knock-offs have been made.
It is very difficult for the untrained casual eye to detect any of the differences that set apart the authentic Tiffany Lamps.
If you ever get your hands on an authentic Tiffany Lamp, hang onto it – that is an heirloom piece.