Publisher's Synopsis
Experts in the field of Louis Comfort Tiffany's work, Nancy A. McClelland and Lars Rachen have made a selection of exceptional lamps - many of which have rarely been seen or published - and nearly every one has been newly photographed to reveal in extraordinary detail the revolutionary artistic quality of Tiffany's glass and the high craftsmanship of these masterpieces of decorative art. Noted authorities on Tiffany, Martin Eidelberg and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, have contributed essays on the history of these objects - enlarging our understanding of Tiffany's achievement. They have drawn upon a host of previously unpublished photographs, paintings, and watercolors by Tiffany and other artists in his employ, as well as on working drawings and studio photographs, and images evoking the lost gardens and interiors of Tiffany's country estate, Laurelton Hall, that so inspired him. They outline the development and manufacture of the Tiffany lamp from freehand sketch to finished form, as well as the chief decorative themes in Tiffany's glass masterpieces and their relation to the work of other fin-de-siècle glassmakers.
