A Century On, the Tiffany Lamp Still Shines Bright

New York Times

03-05-2025

The pieces couples acquire when decorating their first home are often significant. Few purchases, though, prove as influential as the one made by the Neustadts in 1935.
The newlyweds were browsing tchotchkes in a secondhand store in Manhattan when Hildegard Steininger Neustadt discovered what her husband, Egon Neustadt, an orthodontist, later described in a poem as a 'strange, old-fashioned lamp.'
Made from hundreds of pieces of oddly shaped glass in a kaleidoscope of greens and yellows, it illuminated a scene straight from spring, when daffodils herald the end of winter — a scene of hope.
According to Neustadt's memoirs, he and his wife asked the shopkeeper about the lamp and were told that it was the work of an American artist, Louis Comfort Tiffany. Though they did not recognize the name, they eventually handed over $12.50 (somewhere around $290, in today's dollars) and took the lamp — with its Tiffany 'Daffodil' lampshade — home, where Neustadt placed it on his desk.
While unfamiliar to the Neustadts in 1935, Tiffany's prismatic creations have since become widely known, and beloved by many. Today, the lamps are on view in venues across New York, including at the upcoming TEFAF New York art fair, running May 9-13 at the Park Avenue Armory.
The decades have brought discovery, as well, as scholars have uncovered the importance of women to Tiffany's success, and consumers who have encountered the lamps in museums and stores have brought them into their homes. Even younger generations have succumbed to the charm of Tiffany lamps, with some who cannot afford the real deal committing Tiffany's designs to ink as tattoos.
According to Neustadt's handwritten memoirs, which recall the purchase of that first lamp in 1935, his 'friends didn't like it.' But their opinions were of little consequence.
'Tiffany blended perfectly with the Jacobean furnishings in our Long Island home,' Neustadt told The New York Times in an interview in 1971. 'Our home was large and needed many lamps,' he said, 'and the prices were low.'
And so the Neustadts bought more, over 200 of them, making theirs 'one of the largest private collections of Tiffany lamps in the world,' according to Neustadt's obituary that was published in The Times in 1984.
Much of that collection remains in New York City, on display on both sides of the East River: at the Queens Museum, less than two miles from where some of the pieces would have been made at Tiffany Studios in Queens; and at the New York Historical in Manhattan.
The remainder is kept at the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, a private archive in Long Island City containing over 100 lamps, 40 windows and nearly half a million examples of flat glass. The collection is accessible by appointment, and pieces from it occasionally travel the country in temporary exhibitions.
The Tiffany lamps at the Queens Museum are displayed thanks to a partnership with the Neustadt Collection, which is also home to Neustadt's memoirs.
Lindsy R. Parrott, the executive director and curator of the collection, said in an email interview that she first 'fell in love with the beauty and the history' of Tiffany in the late 1990s.
'I was especially transfixed by how much remained unknown about this celebrated and internationally recognized artist — there was so much detective work that still needed to be done, which I found tantalizing,' Parrott said.
The son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, who co-founded the store that became Tiffany & Company, Louis Comfort Tiffany was an artist and designer who believed in translating the beauty of nature into the decorative arts. He ran various art- and design-focused companies from the 1880s until the 1930s, the most famous of which was Tiffany Studios, which produced, among other things, the leaded-glass lamps and windows that became synonymous with his name and that, for a time, captivated a populace enchanted with Art Nouveau. At least, they fascinated the public until styles shifted toward the more minimal appeal of modernism, which took root after World War I.
As Parrott noted, 'Tiffany's work had fallen deeply out of favor by the mid-1930s,' which explained why Neustadt was able to begin his collection for $12.50.
A Tiffany 'Wisteria' table lamp, made around 1905 from more than 2,000 pieces of cascading glass, will be exhibited by the DeLorenzo Gallery at TEFAF New York. Such items today can carry a price in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and have been known to sell for well over $1 million at auction. In 2018, a 'Pond Lily' table lamp brought $3.37 million at Christie's.
How much people are willing to pay for a piece of Tiffany's history is not the only thing that has changed over the decades. A 2007 exhibition at the New York Historical, to which Neustadt had donated 132 of his lamps before his death, revealed something that had previously gone uncelebrated: the role of women in Tiffany's company.
This centrality of female employees, known as Tiffany girls, was discovered when two scholars — Nina Gray and Martin Eidelberg — separately yet almost simultaneously unearthed letters written by Clara Driscoll to her family.
'The correspondence describes her work as a designer and department supervisor as well as the goings-on at Tiffany Studios,' Rebecca Klassen, the curator of material culture at the New York Historical, said in an email interview.
Driscoll ran the Women's Glass Cutting Department, which was formed in 1892 in response to a strike by the Lead Glaziers and Glass Cutters Union, which allowed only men to be members. Tiffany had needed workers to complete windows and mosaics for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, officially known as the World's Columbian Exposition, Klassen said. 'But it was also his belief that women had better color sensitivity and feel for naturalistic design than men,' she added. 'Women had an undeniable impact on the output of Tiffany Studios.'
In an email interview, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, a curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, called herself 'somewhat of a crusader' for Agnes Northrop, whom Frelinghuysen described as one of Tiffany's most important female employees and 'an extraordinary designer.'
Where Driscoll was behind many of Tiffany's lamps, Northrop's visions came to life in the studios' large-scale landscape windows, including one installed last November at the Met. The three-panel window that was commissioned by Sarah Cochran, a philanthropist and leader in the coal industry, and conceived by Northrop, offers a glimpse into the craftsmanship that is at the heart of Tiffany's glasswork, and the skilled women behind it.
'In our window alone, I have estimated over 10,000 individual pieces of glass,' Frelinghuysen said.
Ninety years after the Neustadts acquired their first piece of Tiffany's history, the lamps are back in favor.
'Once again, 'Tiffany' lamps are everywhere, from tattoos to culture,' notes the prospectus of a new traveling exhibition from the Neustadt Collection, 'Tiffany or Ti-phony? A Story of Desire,' which will be on view at Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wis., from January to May 2026.
Beth Mintzer, a tattoo artist who is based in Los Angeles, did her first Tiffany-style ink on a friend when she was learning how to tattoo in 2021. Since then, she has done so many that she has called her business Lamp Lady Tattoo. 'I love them as a tattoo subject because I can't imagine it being something that you grow out of with age,' Mintzer said by email.
'Younger generations have grown to seek out more unique, one-of-a-kind home décor pieces that have their own character and charm, and Tiffany lamps definitely fit that description,' she added.
Parrott said she thought that recent enthusiasm for Tiffany stemmed from nostalgia, 'a nostalgia for what is perceived to be simpler, less complicated times.'
Klassen also suggested that younger generations' fondness for Tiffany lamps was linked to nostalgia. 'However, that era is not the turn of the 20th century,' she said. Instead they were referencing, in their tattoos and décor choices, the Tiffanyesque lamps of 1980s restaurants, and the lamps their parents decorated with.
'Authentic Tiffany lamps command prices that are out of reach for many, so it makes sense to me that these more accessible iterations are a base of inspiration,' Klassen said.
While Frelinghuysen said she found the Tiffany-inspired ink 'fascinating,' she could not explain it.
'I would like to think that the more the public is aware and learns about the subject, the more they appreciate it,' Frelinghuysen said, adding that Northrop's recently installed window had been incredibly well received. 'Perhaps during these ever more challenging times we are living in right now, it provides some joy and solace.'