Tiffany Studios

Joseph and Lilian Mihalak, Pontiac, Michigan

Christie's New York, Magnificent Tiffany Lamps: The Mihalak Collection, March 22, 1980, lot 8

Private Collection, acquired from the above

Christie's New York, June 8, 1991, lot 384

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Alastair Duncan, Louis C. Tiffany: The Garden Museum Collection, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004, p. 301 (for the shade)

Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, p. 155 (for the shade)

Martin Eidelberg, Nina Gray and Margi Hofer, A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, New York, 2007, p. 46, fig. 17 (for the shade)

David A. Hanks, Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection, exh. cat., The Richard H. Driehaus Museum, 2013, p. 61 (for the shade)

Margaret K. Hofer and Rebecca Klassen, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios: Nature Illuminated, New York, 2016, pp. 107-108 (for the shade)

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, pp. 175, no. 706 and 708 and 238, no. 944 (for the shade); 124, no. 482 (for the base)

Peonies have long been associated in Asian cultures with good fortune, love, prosperity and honor. Louis Tiffany, an advanced collector of Japanese and Chinese art and artifacts, undoubtedly was familiar with the flower’s treasured significance. He was also aware of the peony’s beauty, whether as a single or doubled species, with its enormous range of varieties, colors, forms and textures. The flower was a natural and obvious choice for Tiffany to depict in a leaded glass shade.

In fact, peony shades were produced as early as 1902 and were immediately a commercial success. Clara Driscoll, the head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department, wrote to her family in July of that year how pleased she was that twenty “conventional peony globes” of her design were in production. The popularity of the composition remained constant, and Tiffany Studios produced some version of the Peony shade through the early 1920s.

The superb example offered here was listed in the company’s 1906 Price List as model “1505. 22” Peony, Holden $150,” signifying that the shade was intended as either a table or a floor lamp. In this instance, large overlapping blossoms in shades of crimson, scarlet and fuchsia are depicted in various stages of growth. The flowers are among small pink buds and opalescent, white-streaked green leaves. All of this is set against a magnificent background of purple, cobalt, chestnut, blue and red-streaked green. The unusually extensive use of textured glass creates a far greater tactility and three-dimensionality than is generally found in other shades of the same model.

The patinated bronze base is the perfect match for the shade. First appearing in Tiffany Studios 1913 Price List, the “Louis XIV” model was, at $125, one of the most expensive bases offered by the company. The four finely-cast legs, their curled ends raised on a quatrefoil platform, continue to an openwork column separated by small cast fleur-de-lis terminating. The column is capped with a flattened oval containing four interlaced cartouches. It is one of the most intricate bases made by the company and aptly displays the superior quality of works produced by Tiffany’s foundry, just as the shade is proof of the company’s unrivaled craftsmanship in glass.

– PAUL DOROS