Pond Lily Table Lamp

Louis Comfort Tiffany was trained as a painter, but after 1880 he devoted himself primarily to decorative work and to the design and production of glass. He was praised for the shimmering spectral qualities of his trademark “Favrile” glassware, for which glass of different colors was combined while still molten, then blown and sometimes twisted and twirled to achieve effects suggestive of the color, light, and texture of flowers and other natural forms. One of Tiffany’s most effective floral shades is the extraordinary water-lily lamp, with its cluster of iridescent blossoms. Tiffany—not to be confused with his jeweler father, Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of the firm that still bears the family name—was an imaginative and inventive glass artist. He was both a participant in and product of the Aesthetic Movement of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which introduced the singular vision of an artist into the decorative arts. He drew on exotic and historical sources, including the aesthetic traditions of Asia and the Middle East, and emulated the fine craftsmanship championed by the Arts and Crafts Movement.