Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) wasn’t just any old member of the family that spawned Tiffany & Co., the New York-headquartered jewellery giant, he was also a successful artist and designer in his own right. His life-long passion for stained glass, blown glass, ceramics and, of course, jewellery, ultimately led the innovative entrepreneur to branch out in 1878 to launch Tiffany Studios, his own bespoke glass-making business. It proved to be an inspired move, with his company’s creative and multifaceted use of his chosen medium eventually seeing his products known the world over simply as Tiffany Glass.
Recently, one of the most elegant works ever to be created in his workshops featured as a headline lot at Sotheby’s The Geyer Collection: Masterworks of Tiffany and Pre-war Design Auction. Created around 1910, the piece – the Important Dragonfly Floor Lamp – was fashioned in vibrant red and orange cabochons and hemmed with stained Tiffany Glass dragonflies, with its lamp shade perched atop an unusual opalescent glass ball-accented stand. Given its rarity, beauty and provenance, it was perhaps unsurprising that the bidding finally peaked at US$675,000.