#AntiqueMasterpieces"A celebration of beauty, Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection features more than 60 objects, spanning over 30 years of Tiffany’s prolific career. One of America’s most renowned artists, Louis Comfort Tiffany worked in nearly all of the media available to artists and designers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—glass, ceramic, metalwork, jewelry, and painting. Tiffany’s technical brilliance in a wide variety of media enabled him to convey his awe of the natural world through a range of objects, from common household items to one-of-a-kind masterpieces.
This exhibition celebrates the artistry and craftsmanship of the Tiffany artworks from Chicago’s distinguished Richard H. Driehaus Collection, highlighting masterworks never before presented in a comprehensive exhibition."
This wonderful Tiffany floor lamp has been part of the Henry Ford's collection
since 1966 and has never been exhibited. As part of the traveling exhibit, Lewis
Comfort Tiffany, Treasures from the Driehaus Collection, we have the
opportunity to conserve and exhibit it for the first time. I'm Charles Sable,
Curator of Decorative Arts at the Henry Ford. When this lamp came into the
1966, scholarship on Tiffany was at its very beginnings. The earliest museum
exhibits that focused on Lewis Comfort Tiffany date to the late 1950s. In 1966,
I am sure that most of my predecessors thought that this wonderful lamp that
they acquired was complete. According to our records, they realized in 1967 that
the outer portion of the base was missing. They had no reference sources to
tell them what other bases of this type might have looked like. So, the lamp went
unseen for decades. It was only during the 1980s to the early 2000s, as museums
and scholars dug deeply into Tiffany's life and the history of his enterprises,
that a detailed body of knowledge emerged. From these publications, we were
able to discover what this outer base looked like. What is also interesting
about this floor lamp is that it is one of the few Tiffany floor lamps to burn
kerosene as a fuel. Many of us are familiar with Tiffany's electric lamps,
which were the majority of the firm's production. In the 1890s, before
electricity became widespread in American homes, kerosene was the preferred
lighting source for most people. The light produced by this lamp, like nearly
all Tiffany lamps, is a soft, shimmering glow. Filtered through Tiffany's
patented iridescent, or favreel, glass. When I look at this lamp, I am struck by
the swirling, undulating organic forms on the exterior of the base. These may be
seen rising from the foot of the base, right up through the stem of the lamp.
They are also to be found on the exterior of the lamp's kerosene reservoir,
forming S-shapes across the surface, giving it a rich, organic quality. The
shade, with its iridescent green glass and fish scale-like leading, is also
highly organic. These may be described as designs associated with the Art Nouveau
style, which was extremely popular during the 1890s and early 1900s in America and
Europe. Tiffany was the most important American artist working in the Art Nouveau,
and was acclaimed for his artistry on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm Charles
Sable, with the Henry Ford.
