22" Tulip, Part 1 The Layout

Even though the weather has been chilly, wet and gloomy all through the month of April this spring, inside the studio it has been bright and colorful. We have been working steadily on a large 22" Tulip shade for a client. This shade has 1125 individual pieces of glass, each of which is laid out and cut to fit the pattern one piece at a time by hand.

The 22" Tulip is one of Tiffany Studios' more challenging floral designs, with tightly clustered flowers filling the top of the shade. Our client requested a dramatic color shift for the pink flowers so Irwin Terry began the layout with saturated tones of fuchsia, purple and orange at the very top that lighten and incorporate lighter pinks and white as they move down the shade.

For this design, three sectional repeats make up the shade. The gapping seen in the lower portion of each repeat is needed so the design can fit onto the curvature of the three dimensional lamp form.

With the layout completed, we began foiling each piece of glass. For a lamp this size the process of foiling will take days to complete, even with both of us working together. Bill Campbell is seen foiling a section. Foiling is a visual and manual process, so we often listen to audiobooks while we foil shades.

We will show the next steps and finished lamp in an upcoming post.