The colorful, stained-glass effect decor items produced by Tiffany Studios represent some of the most beautiful and quintessential specimens of pre-war design such as the Oriental Poppy lamp, which sold for $1.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York this past May. As a painter, Louis Comfort Tiffany was fascinated with the interplay of light and color, and using opalescent glass as his canvas, created masterful renderings of nature — such as flowers or landscape scenes — and decorative geometric patterns in lampshades and leaded-glass windows that popped with color and texture.
