Tiffany Studios Desk Lamp, ca. 1925

Appraised on: July 25, 2009

Appraised in: Denver, Colorado

Appraised by: Nicholas Dawes

Category: Pottery & Porcelain

Episode Info: Denver, Hour 1 (#1410)

Originally Aired: March 29, 2010

IMAGE: 1 of 1  

Appraisal Video: (1:57)

GUEST: This lamp was left to my husband and I by his aunt when she passed away, along with other household items. It came into her possession as a gift to her husband, who was a prominent physician in the Denver area. The lamp was given to him by a neighbor in gratitude for his medical care and his friendship. Probably back in the late '40s or early '50s.

APPRAISER: It's made of gilded bronze, and at the time when it was new, which was probably, by the way, a generation earlier than the late '40s, early '50s, it would have been made in, I suspect, the mid to late 1920s. It's a desk lamp. Do you use the lamp?

GUEST: It sits on my husband's desk now, and he does use it.

APPRAISER: I'm going to turn it on, because it still works.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: Now, tell me a little more about what you'd like to know about it.

GUEST: Well, it says "Tiffany" on the bottom, and I have never seen a Tiffany lamp that did not have a glass shade. And I had been wondering just how unusual it is that this has a metal shade.

APPRAISER: I suspect if you put "Tiffany lamp" into a search engine, you'd get probably tens of thousands of responses, and the overwhelming majority of them would show a lamp with a leaded glass shade.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: Of a type that Louis Comfort Tiffany pioneered. He was not the only person to make them, but he was making the best ones and pioneered the technique. And when we think of a Tiffany lamp, we tend to think of something worth a lot of money. But the majority of Tiffany lamps like this one, I'm afraid, aren't.

GUEST: Oh, you're going to disappoint me, aren't you?

APPRAISER: Well, I'm going to disappoint you maybe in one way. I hope it's good news to know that it is an authentic Tiffany lamp. There's certainly no dispute about that. If it came to auction today, you would certainly see an estimate on this of between $1,000 and $1,500.

GUEST: Okay. I'm sure my husband will continue to use it on his desk.