Tiffany Studios New York "Eighteen Light Lily" Table Lamp

This Tiffany Studios New York glass and patinated bronze "Eighteen-Light-Lily" table lamp, features eighteen golden iridescent Favrile glass "Lily" shades on individual bronze stems extending upwards from an "Lily Pad" base. A rare distinguishing feature of this example is the "statuary patina" finish that involved copper-plating the bronze, acid-etching the surface, and then exposing the metal to acids and pigments, resulting in a mellow grayish-brown patina that achieves greater fidelity to nature. This "Lily" lamp marks the combination of two of Tiffany's favorite floral motifs, the pond lily and the morning glory. These shades take the form of morning glories; enhanced by their polychromatic brilliance and trumpet-like shape, and inspired by popularly distributed Japanese woodblock prints, Louis Comfort Tiffany made many watercolor paintings of morning glories and meditated on them frequently.