If you read Monday’s blog, you know that better Tiffany Studios items were very strong at Christie’s Important Tiffany auction on December 15, 2010. Sotheby’s followed the next day with their Important Tiffany auction, also with impressive results. With only 33 lots for sale, the auction grossed $5,583,375.
Rare Tiffany Studios Grape table lamp, Sotheby's lot #221
The top lot of the sale was the cover lot, #221, a rare Grape table lamp, in the shape of a Wisteria. Estimated to sell for $400,000—600,000, it realized $1,202,500, including buyer’s premium, doubling the estimate — an understandable result for a beautiful and rare Tiffany Studios lamp. So how do you explain the following result?
Tiffany Studios Daffodil table lamp, Sotheby's lot #232
Lot #232 was a Tiffany 20″ Daffodil table lamp — a nice example, but certainly not remarkable. On a good day, it might have sold for $100,000. On this day, it sold for the extraordinary price of $512,500, against an estimate of $50,000-70,000 — 10 times the estimate. The consignor must have been giddy. And why not? It’s the equivalent of winning the lottery. The only sensible explanation is that two bidders who have more cents than sense (my mother would have liked that one, too), were bidding against each other. Pride and competitiveness won out over logic. All one of them had to do was to go into a shop on Madison Ave. and buy a similar lamp for a fraction of the price.
Another six Tiffany Studios lamps sold for over $250,000, for a total of eight. They included a Laburnum ($842,500), a rare Landscape floor lamp ($842,500), and a Peacock table lamp ($410,500).
Tiffany Favrile wheel-carved vase, Sotheby's lot #203
Only a few lots of high quality Tiffany Favrile glass were offered, all selling well. A beautiful wheel-carved vase, lot#203, sold for $50,000, against a pre-sale estimate of $8,000—12,000.
For the complete results of the sale, use the following link: Sotheby’s Important Tiffany results.
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I just found your website/blog, very interesting. I agree with your observation on the Daffodil lamp, sold at Sotheby’s last December for $512,000. It is, as you write, particularly unremarkable. However, FYI, Sotheby’s has a daffodil in their upcoming 6/15/11 auction which is in fact quite remarkable. It’s lot 16, and it looks online to be quite amazing because of the unusually fine color pallette of the glass used. I have not seen a daffodil with the broad range of yellow-golds, ambers, blues, lavenders, and greens, since the exhibit, a few years ago, by the New York Historical Society of Dr. Egon Neustadt’s Tiffany lamps. And of the three shades at the exhibit of this very same shade design (without gilt), this Sotheby’s lamp is finer. I look forward to the viewing.
where on a Peacock Tiffany lamp do u C the mark that indicates it is a “Tiffany” lamp?
Authentic Tiffany lamps are usually signed on the inside lower rim of the shade and also on the underside of the base.