This extremely rare Peacock Sample Panel was likely displayed in Tiffany Studios’ workrooms in the early 1900s where it would have been used as a guide for glass selection by the “Tiffany Girls” working in the Women’s Glass Cutting Department.
The plumage of the peacock appears frequently throughout Louis Comfort Tiffany’s oeuvre. The jewel-toned, striated feathers were translated into a stylized decorative motif on some of the earliest blown Favrile Glass vases, while the exotic bird can be seen perched on a balustrade in several important early Tiffany windows. The Peacock motif was also one of the first to be adapted by designer Clara Driscoll for leaded glass shades for Tiffany Lamps, likely around the same time as her other early designs including the iconic Dragonfly Lamp.
This sample panel features an affixed bronze plate at the top left corner noting that it was intended to serve as a guide for the 16-inch diameter “Conventional” Peacock shade, a rare early model that was only produced by Tiffany Studios for a short period of time around 1900. This particular model, a dome-shaped shade depicting a repeating pattern of vertically oriented feathers, as seen in this panel, incorporates narrow pieces of striated glass carefully arranged to achieve a subtle gradation of color. This shade was was eventually replaced by a more stylized design utilizing larger pieces of glass around 1906.
Lillian Nassau LLC previously sold an example of this rare early Peacock Lamp incorporating opalescent glass in the same color palette and arrangement which appears to have been selected from the same sheet as the glass used in this Sample Panel, indicating that it was likely produced around the same time.
Few original “sample panels” for Tiffany Lamps have survived; extant examples are held by the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida, as well as the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass in New York.
Height: 12 ¼ inches
Width: 16 ⅜ inches
Reference:
Martin Eidelberg, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Nancy McClelland, and Lars Rachen, "The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany" (The Vendome Press, 2005), pg. 201