Some of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s earliest designs for leaded glass windows depicted vases overflowing with peony blossoms, likely based on one of Tiffany’s oil paintings. Under his direction, Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls designed a limited series of leaded glass shades for Tiffany lamps depicting Peony flowers, including this shade model, introduced around 1910, which combines a geometric background of richly saturated Tiffany glass with a frieze of flowers.
The vibrantly colored Peony Border shade, of domed form with straight sides, features an upper register formed by a geometric arrangement of squares of Tiffany glass in a rich shade of deep golden yellow. The lower register of the shade comprises a band of peonies in various stages of development, the petals articulated in variegated and streaky glass in shades of red with accents of orange and pink. The leaves and stems surrounding the flowers are formed by mottled green and blue glass. Below this floral motif are two border rows, the upper border in mottled celadon, the lower in the same golden yellow glass found in the upper portion of the shade. An example of this shade is in the permanent collection of the New-York Historical, and is on display in their famed Gallery of Tiffany Lamps (N84.47.1).
The shade sits on a footed bronze “Senior Floor” base, the cushioned foot decorated with pod motif, in the original etched doré patina. The lamp is topped with a reticulated metal “pigtail” heat cap in matching patina.
Both the shade and base of this authentic Tiffany lamp are signed.
Height: 78 inches (198 cm)
Diameter: 23 ½ inches (60 cm)
Reference:
Margaret K. Hofer and Rebecca Klassen, The Lamps of Tiffany Studios: Nature Illuminated (Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc 2016), page 105.