This rare original Tiffany lamp showcases the luxurious quality of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s custom-made glass.
Tiffany Studios introduced the Russian leaded glass shade around 1910. The composition of this cone-shaped shade highlights a series of dramatic panels of heavily mottled Tiffany glass in a rich golden-amber color, the more opaque areas of mottling shifting into a deeper hue. The upper register of the shade features eight disks of glass, with eight larger arched panels dominating the central portion. These large pieces of glass are bordered by a narrow band of slightly lighter golden yellow glass, surrounded by an elaborate arrangement of scrolling motifs in the same palette. Between the arched pieces, golden yellow glass frames two small circular pieces of glass in variegated blue and gold, perhaps suggesting glass jewels or gemstone, with a frieze of diamond-shaped pieces of the same variegated blue glass encircling the slightly curved lower edge of the shade.
The background glass utilized in this shade is exceptional, shifting from opaque, deeply saturated mottled blue glass at the crown of the shade into a warmer purple tone along the lower edge; the transitional area throughout the central portion of the shade masterfully blends the different color tones.
A rough graphite sketch for a lamp shade with a strikingly similar design to the composition seen in the upper register of the Russian shade is part of a collection of Tiffany Studios watercolor studies and preparatory drawings held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (67.654.417). This drawing may have been a preliminary study that was adapted further by Tiffany's designers to produce the more elaborate arrangement seen in the Russian shade.
Though this Tiffany Lamp base has been called the “Four Virtues” Base, period references and price lists distributed by Tiffany Studios after 1910 indicate that this model was listed as both the Old English and Early English Base. Each of the four flat planes of the central stem of the lamp depicts a stylized female figure in medieval garb in low relief, accompanied by the inscriptions: Veridas, Charitas, Fides and Puritas, with additional stylized decoration including heraldic motifs on the lower portion of the stem and the foot. This example of the Old English base retains its original rich brown-green patina.
Both the shade and base of this authentic Tiffany lamp are signed with firm’s marks and model numbers.
Height: 25 inches (63.5 cm)
Diameter: 20 inches (50.8 cm)
Reference:
Egon Neustadt, The Lamps of Tiffany, New York, 1990, p. 71