Tiffany Lamps Bring Color and
Beauty into a Room
Today’s Tiffany lamps are manufactured by several companies
and come in an astonishing array of styles and shapes. All of them owe their popularity to the
original stained glass lamps designed by the Tiffany Company starting in the
1890’s. These beautiful
turn-of-the-century lamps remained popular until the 1930’s, when the Art Deco
movement began, calling for more streamlined lamps with less detail.
Tiffany Lamps Created
by Famous Window Designer
Louis Comfort Tiffany was already famous for creating
beautiful stained glass windows when he created his first stained glass
lampshade from bits of glass left over from an oversized window. He rearranged the bit of glass into patterns,
then joined them with copper foil and soldered them together with lead to
create a strong lampshade that cast lovely patterns of light around the room
through the brilliantly colored light chips.
The popularity of Tiffany lamps was at its greatest during
the Art Nouveau movement, which aimed to bring the beauty of the arts into
homes through fine, hand-crafted household items. Today you can find many antique lamps by Tiffany
and his staff of designers in museums across the country. Occasionally, a genuine, original Tiffany
lamp is sold at auction, but unless you’re wealthy, these antique lamps won’t
make it into your living room. The last
one sold for over two million dollars!
Today’s Tiffany Lamps
are Affordable
Tiffany himself turned to painting later in his life and the
popularity of his lamps faded in the 1930’s, eventually going out of production
entirely. In the last half of the
twentieth century, interest in these antique lamps grew. People loved the attention to detail, rich,
jewel-like colors and lovely designs found in Tiffany lamps, and in response
several lighting manufacturers began creating new Tiffany lamps. Although not entirely handmade, these new styles
were just as lovely and were much more affordable, allowing the typical
homeowner the chance to own one of these beautiful lamps.
Two of the most popular designs used in original Tiffany
lamps included the dragonfly and the nautilus shell. Today, antique lamps with these motifs are
highly prized. Early Tiffany lamps often
featured wonderful, natural elements, but Tiffany also created a lot of
geometric styles that features squares, rectangles and triangles that were
favored for more masculine rooms such as libraries and studies.
Today you can find hundreds of different motifs in Tiffany
lamps. Geometric styles, natural motifs
such as fruits and flowers and lovely scroll work can all be found in today’s
Tiffany lamps.
Today’s Tiffany lamps are also more versatile. While Louis Comfort Tiffany worked primarily
with table lamps, you can find Tiffany style lighting in table lamps, floor
lamps, chandeliers and even pendant lighting.
Rich colors run the gamut from pale, pearlescent pastels to dark, rich colors
such as emerald green and garnet. The
durable, decorative Tiffany lamps of today are likely to become the prized
antique lamps of tomorrow.
copyright Profile-Lighting 2008, Tiffany Leaded Glass Lamps and Lighting
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