The Allamanda Hanging Shade is believed to be one of Clara Driscoll’s designs for Tiffany Studios; the Allamanda motif was only adapted into a few designs for leaded glass shades for Tiffany Lamps, with only three listed in the company’s 1906 Price List (though the company misspelled the flower as Allamander).
The 28-inch diameter hanging shade model seen here also has the rare distinction of appearing in a period photograph: workmen at Tiffany Studios can be seen glazing an Allamanda shade of the same design in a photograph in an 1899 article on the making of stained glass written by Theodore Dreiser for The Cosmopolitan, a popular turn of the century magazine.
The Allamanda is also one of the extremely rare non-repeating floral designs produced by Tiffany Studios. The company produced very few “continuous” designs, likely owing to the additional time and cost involved in selecting, cutting and soldering the glass for the more complicated composition.
Yet the result of this effort by the designers and artists at Tiffany Studios is a highly effective and pleasing design, with this example enhanced by particularly fine glass selection. Each cluster of flowers as you move around the shade features a unique configuration of buttery yellow blossoms in mottled glass, cascading down from the crown of the shade on thin green stems of rippled Tiffany Glass. This motif is framed by Tiffany Glass in deeply saturated shades of blue which shift in intensity as you move around the shade, with several areas streaked with green and yellow glass, referring to the floral motif.
A related domed example measuring 20 inches in diameter is in the permanent collection of the New-York Historical Society (N84.100.1).
Diameter: 28 inches (71.1 cm)
References:
Theodore Dreiser, "The Making of Stained-Glass Windows," The Cosmopolitan, vol. XXVI, no. 3, January 1899, p. 251
Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen, The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2005, p. 67, no. 89