Tiffany Studios

Barr-Gardner Associates, Ltd., New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1985

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, p. 137 (for the shade and base pairing)

The peacock was one of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s favorite decorative motifs, and he incorporated it into the full range of his work, from leaded glass windows to jewelry. He was obviously intrigued by the vivid iridescent blue, purple and green sheen of the bird’s feathers. The peacock was also particularly well suited to church decorations. It was a symbol of immortality to the ancient Romans, as they believed its flesh did not decay after death. The early Christians readily adapted this symbolism. To them, the peacock’s shedding of its feathers each year and growing newer, more resplendent plumage represented the resurrection of Christ.

Peacock-decorated Favrile glass vases were first displayed at the company’s Fourth Avenue showrooms in the early spring of 1897. An article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle at the time declared:

"There is now on exhibition at the Tiffany Studios, 333 Fourth Avenue, New York, a most remarkable collection of blown glass, the latest efforts of Mr. Louis C. Tiffany. The beauty and gorgeousness of the peacock suggested to him that he might obtain in Favrile glass similar color effects. After a series of experiments, he has succeeded in producing numbers of vases and plaques, where the color motive, and in some cases the form as well, of the peacock has been carried out, not in a purely realistic manner, but with just enough realism to at once bring to the mind the brilliancy and color of its plumage…. It would seem as if Mr. Tiffany in this Peacock Favrile glass has reached the highest point of his art."

The timing of the exhibition is another indication of Tiffany’s marketing acumen. Several New York City newspapers, probably given the information by Tiffany himself, reminded the public that the peacock was symbolic of Christ’s resurrection, and these vases would make an ideal gift for Easter.

The trumpet-shaped base of the extraordinary lamp on offer here is composed of opaque olive glass finely decorated with an ornate pulled-feather design in shades of mauve, violet, navy, emerald and cream. The lower half of the body is further enhanced with cobalt peacock “eyes” of varying sizes bordered in iridescent gold. The exterior is additionally augmented with a pock-marked Cypriote finish and a multi-hued iridescence. The base encloses a beautifully patinated fuel cannister finely cast with peacock plumes. An ornate Favrile glass shade, of opalescent white glass with an intricate Damascene design and a mirrored orange iridescence, sits securely on the cannister’s fitted mount. Interestingly, the base of this lamp is nearly identical to an example in the permanent collection of the Corning Museum of Glass (acquisition no. 2006.4.287), both having a fuel cannister with the identical markings.

This lamp is truly indicative of the Peacock-decorated Favrile glass objects that led another critic of the 1897 exhibition to proclaim that this innovation of Tiffany’s was “in some respects the finest, seeming to gather up in a synthesis all the true Favrile beauties, color, iridescence, luster, metallic reflexes that seem more at home on precious pottery than on glass; ornamentation at once consistent, lovely, and full of mystery.”

– PAUL DOROS