We’ve all seen lamps with stained glass that are in the Tiffany style. Pretty things usually. But they cannot compare to the real glass from Tiffany used in his lamps from the 1900-1920s. Yesterday Dave and I went to the exhibit at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art that featured several of his lamps, vases, wall hangings and jewelry. It was fabulous.
One of the most interesting things shown were pieces of the plate glass Tiffany artisans used to create the lamps. One lamp had peony blossoms that shaded from white to pink to rose, just the way a real flower would. The show had that exact glass – randomly shaded and swirled with white, pink and rose.
The plate glass was not pretty! It had none of the grandeur or beauty that it had when carefully selected, cut and finished into a lamp. It looked more like someone swirled colors together, almost like end of day glass or slag glass. Some people love slag glass but I’m drawn to the pure colors of transparent colored glass. I would never have been able to pick out the colors to use to make such gorgeous designs.
The show included one of Tiffany’s famous dragonfly lamps. Each wing had well over 100 pieces of glass, each selected by hand by trained artisans whose only job was to select glass. Then the pieces were cut and finished with the copper foil to create the wonderful designs.
My favorite pieces were a few of the lamps and a vase. I loved the naturalistic shape and the iridescent golden ruffle around the rim. They had the vase displayed right at eye level so I could barely see the inside, but it looked like it was golden color too, and with an iridescent shimmer like stretch glass.
Have you seen real Tiffany glass?