Mission Style Tiffany Lamps

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lotsoflamps.com :: Tiffany Desk Lamps

Natural variation in the Tiffany Desk Lamp's glass and finish make each and every one a masterpiece all its own. Choose from a wide variety including Mission Styles.

 


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 Tiffany desk lamps

Tiffany desk lamps can brighten up a desk are and make time spent working much more enjoyable, with the serene colors and peaceful styles supplying the workspace light.  Tiffany desk lamps are available in a dazzling array of designs, styles and color combinations so you can find one that suits your style and your space.  Tiffany desk lamps that are produced today are all reproductions of the lamps made by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his employees in the late 19th and early 20th century lamps made in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Tiffany worked in New York for an interior design firm, creating stained glass window displays and painting. The leftover pieces of glass inspired him, and he began placing them together to create lampshade designs, and then designing his own from new glass. He remained on at the firm for some time while he created his own lamp designs, but eventually recruited a few artistic craftspeople to help him create, and left the firm to focus on his lampshade design designs.  His designs were artwork, but he wanted them to be useful and used in people's homes rather than just put on display somewhere.

Tiffany desk lamps were handmade, with no mass-produced pieces or techniques involved.  The designs were drawn by hand; the glass was painstakingly cut a piece at a time, and soldered together by hand. They kept no records of how many times each individual design was used, so no one knows how many Tiffany desk lamps or other Tiffany creations from one design ever existed.  This is one reason for the high value of original Tiffany desk lamps and other lamps. Their rarity today caused on to sell for over 8 million dollars.

That's the reason that Tiffany desk lamps in homes today are reproductions.  But even among these, the quality can vary from inexpensive (and inauthentic) knock-offs to high quality reproductions that stay true to the original artist.  Dale Tiffany lamps are one of the most highly respected reproductions produced Tiffany desk lamps today.  The methods used and the materials as well are those that more closely resemble what Tiffany used that almost any other manufacturer producing reproductions today.

Tiffany desk lamps all begin with a design that's drawn onto heavy cardboard or a material that will stand up for a long time.  Here is where the shapes of the glass and the colors are decided and written right onto the pattern.  Then glass is placed on top and traced to transfer the design.  The glass is cut and the edges are ground smooth.  It's cleaned and joined together in the correct pattern with copper foil, then soldered.  These are the steps originally used to create the fine pieces, so true reproductions should be created similarly.

True reproductions should also use the same styles found in original Tiffany desk lamps to give that original appearance, too.  He created what's known as Irregular Upper and Lower Border lamps, which were those with openwork on some of the edges, which made the design look like tree branches.   Flowers, foliage, dragonflies, spiderwebs and spiders were also often featured in Tiffany desk lamps.  Geometric shapes were often used, as well.

Tiffany desk lamps were made with opalescent glass, or glass that can show many different shades and qualities of color when viewed from different angles or in different light.  He liked the flawed glass often produced at the time, too.  The more interesting the colors and the density and appearance of the glass, the more he preferred it. These qualities-interest and changeability-should be present in Tiffany desk lamps.

Flat glass is the mark of a poor reproduction.  Though almost all glass lamps are called Tiffany lamps today, most still recognize stained glass as a "Tiffany."  Find out how the manufacturer makes reproductions.  That way you can be sure of finding good reproduction Tiffany desk lamps.