This blog is among my most trivial. My apologies in advance.
Alice is my late mother and Tiffany was a great turn of the 20th century designer.
My mother left me an inheritance of several pieces of art that are functional. One is a Tiffany lamp illustrated in the photograph on the right. I think this was bought by her aunt Blanche who liked Art Nouveau. Bought when she was in her 20’s. I remember seeing some of her art in her 82nd near 5th Avenue apartment in Manhattan.
This lamp still works perfectly and I use it. Because it is a Tiffany I wanted to insure it if it was especially valuable. I sent photographs of it to a Tiffany appraiser.
The appraiser informed me that since the plain eisenglass was prominent on the lamp it was not worth much. He made the point that people pay for fancy colored glass when they buy Tiffany.
I have shown here on the left what he is talking about.
I understand that there was plenty of bad art in the Art Nouveau period. There was clearly plenty of good art as well.
The appraiser said that Alice's lamp would auction for something in the low thousands of dollars but it would be in the 6 digit range if it had colored glass.
I certainly plan to keep my mother's lamp and pass it on to whichever child or grandchild can appreciated it. I simply want to complain to my beloved blog readers that I think the clear eisenglass version can be considered beautiful but the colored glass versions are rather gaudy. Not in the positive Gaudi tradition.