Louis Comfort Tiffany was addicted to beauty, and his jewel-like stained glass lamps were his art form. Each piece was meticulously hand detailed and assembled in his New York studio starting in the late 1890s, just as the light bulb was about to revolutionize illumination and decor.
Tiffany lamps have become so familiar today that they no longer seem to belong to a particular time and place. Yet their manufacture and initial wave of popularity at the turn of the 20th century coincided with the development of electricity as well as the arrival of a new esthetic, Art Nouveau, on this side of the Atlantic.