Studio Hours

Century Studios is closed for the Holidays

We will resume regular business hours

on Tuesday January 2

 
 

Lamp of the Week: 20" Poppy

The 20" Poppy shade is one of the most popular Tiffany Studios shade designs. The shade can be created in any color scheme and filigree on both the leaves and flower centers give the shade a unique appearance. We created this shade as a showroom piece over 25 years ago using Lins glass. The shade is shown on the Twisted Vine base. This lamp is in a private collection.

25" Mandarin Lotus

The 25" Mandarin Lotus is a symmetrically complex shade with an undulating accordion pleat surface. Tiffany Studios fashioned the shade to represent a large lotus leaf, with each lead line representing a vein in the leaf. Each of the 24 peaked ribs of the shade have a hand applied copper wire which accentuates the veining. The wires bisect seven times on their path from the top of the shade to the outer border. The rim of the shade is finished with a half round copper wire, providing additional strength to the shade.

In 2012 we visited the Huntington Library and Gardens in California and snapped this photo in the Lily Pond Garden. It is difficult to get a sense of scale from the photo, but many of the large Lotus leaves are two feet in diameter.

The Mandarin Lotus base (also called the Ribbed Lotus base) represents the slender stalks that support the large leaves, and was designed by Tiffany Studios specifically for this shade. We created both the shade and bronze base for this lamp. This lamp was commissioned by a West Coast client.

Lamp of the Week: 24" Poppy

With it generous proportions and unusual filigreed irregular lower edge, the 24" Poppy with Filigree makes a bold decorating statement. For this shade, the flowers were made in many shades of red, orange, yellow and deep pink. The sparkling, lightly textured background glass is made from a glass that blends together the flower and leaf colors. The addition of pieced metal filigrees on the flower centers and leaves adds a layer of interest to the shade. We created this shade in 2013 as a showroom piece, and it is now in a private collection.

Lamp of the Week: 28" Poinsettia

We are completing a large lamp at the studio, so here is a second "lamp of the week' presentation. The 28" Poinsettia is the a generously proportioned shade that can be used as a chandelier, as an oversized table lamp, or on a Jr. Floor base. This example, commissioned in 2009 by a client in Chicago, features vibrant reds and greens. The 28" Poinsettia shade has a non repeating pattern,  so the design looks different when viewed from every angle.

Lamp of the Week: 18" Poinsettia

Commissioned in 2008 by a client in Chicago, this lush 18" Poinsettia has a deep blue fracture glass background peeking through the olive green trellis. The red poinsettias are a mix of textured and smooth red glasses. The shade is shown on the distinctive Osage Pottery base.

18" Flowering Lotus

The 18" Flowering Lotus lamp is an astonishingly complex Tiffany lamp design. The integrated shade and base begins with a wide cluster of bronze lily pads which rests firmly on the table. Ten individual flower stems ascend from the pads, making their way up inside the shade, each ending in a light socket. The upward thrust of the bronze stems is picked up and transformed into glass on the shade.  Each glass stem splits and follows the path indicated by the base as they cascade downwards from the top of the shade. These delicate glass stems end in a glorious explosion of blossoms.

With almost 1800 individual pieces of glass within the confines of a relatively small shade, this piece must be meticulously hand crafted and assembled. For comparison, the 28" Magnolia shade has 1260 pieces of glass. The pattern for this shade will drive the glass artist to distraction if order and method is not employed throughout every stage of the layout and construction. The hand rolled art glass used to create the shade is approximately 1/8" thick, and many of the stem pieces towards the top of the shade end in slivers that are much narrower than the thickness of the glass.

The colors for this example were carefully blended beginning with sparkling rippled glass used for the water portions of the shade. The rippled glass has transparent tones of blue, yellow, and green mixed into a lightly colored base glass of red/purple/clear. The pink and white flowers are tinged with subtle shades of blue, yellow, purple, red, and green, adding depth to the color pallet of the shade. The stems reflect all the different tones of glass found within the shade. The result is a blended color scheme where each tone reflects and balances with one another.

Once the painstaking process of layout was completed, each piece was hand wrapped in copper foil. The foiled pieces are shown being transferred onto the form in preparation for soldering. The shade was extensively reinforced with copper wires soldered along the lead lines on the interior of the shade. A half round copper wire was also added to the irregular lower edge of the shade, providing additional strength for the shade.

Using molds taken from an original Tiffany example, we created the cast bronze Pond Lily base for this shade. Because of the depth of the shade, there are ten lights positioned at two levels. When illuminated, the upper and lower scattering of lights within the shade provide more sparkle than a single row of lights would achieve.

Tiffany designed this shade with air vents in the glass at the top. This is a necessary engineering feature that lets the heat generated by the light bulbs to flow out of the shade. Without this venting, the heat from the lights would build up and potentially weaken the leading at the top of the shade.

The Flowering Lotus is one of Tiffany Studios' masterpiece lamp designs. This spectacular lamp was commissioned by a California client.