Sotheby’s New York established a new auction record for a leaded Tiffany lamp on December 11, when a Magnolia design floor lamp sold for US$4.4m (including premium) after a ten-minute bidding battle.
The lamp, which was thought to have been commissioned c.1910 by renowned New York landscape architect Samuel Bowne Parsons Jnr, was probably the work of Agnes Northrop, who worked alongside Clara Driscoll as one of the ‘Tiffany Girls’ in the Women’s Glass Cutting Department at Tiffany. Agnes frequently visited local nurseries in her area to sketch the plants that most interested her and she included magnolias in her design for at least two stunning leaded glass windows for Tiffany, one of which was awarded a silver medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.
As a Tiffany designer, Agnes was only allowed to work at the firm if she remained unmarried, which she did – for her entire career. Having stated that she ‘did not do figures’, she became mainly associated with flowers, foliage and landscapes in Tiffany windows.
The Sotheby’s shade designed by Agnes featured a multitude of magnolias shown in a range of stages, from buds to blossoms about to unfurl and fully opened flowers, many of them in rippled and drapery glass that gave an unusual three-dimensional sense.
‘The Magnolia floor lamp has long been revered as one of Tiffany Studios’ most grand and impressive designs,’ noted the Sotheby’s catalogue. ‘Due to its rarity, it has been an exceedingly long period since the model has appeared on the market, and at least two decades since an example of this exceptional beauty and artistic quality has been offered. A list of collectors who have owned an example is equally iconic, including a young Steve Jobs, who felt his own Magnolia lamp should be the primary, and only, decorative element in his living room.’
Measuring 70cm in diameter, the Magnolia shade was the largest and second-most expensive shade in the 1913 Tiffany catalogue, where it was listed at a cost of US$300. Now it’s become the world’s most expensive Tiffany lamp at auction, eclipsing the US$3.37m paid at Christie’s New York in 2018 for a Pond Lily table lamp.
