Design moment: Tiffany Lamps, c.1893

By rights these exquisite stained glass lamps should be called Driscoll lamps but the history of the design classic is yet another example of women being written out of design history. The distinctive lamps came on the market just before the turn of the last century, innovative handmade products from the studio of Louis Comfort Tiffany. They were – as was only discovered by US academic Martin Eidelberg in 2007 – created by Clara Driscoll who worked in Tiffany’s studio. Driscoll was her married name, her husband Francis Driscoll surely having some Irish connection. Many of the brightly-coloured lamps feature designs inspired by nature such as daffodils, dragonflies or lily ponds. There are also geometric designs although the floral ones, such as the daffodil design, are the most sought after and command the highest prices. Copies appeared almost immediately – a fake Tiffany lamp can be difficult to spot although collectors advise a long list of “tells” including the glass changing colour when the lamp is lit, and the base being made of bronze or craft pottery, never wood or brass.

A genuine lamp should be stamped with Tiffany Studios New York.

Almost any leaded lampshade made with coloured glass now is called a “Tiffany” . They come in and out of fashion and were popular once again in interiors in the 1980s and early 1990s when stripped pine was in vogue and there’s something about the warmth of the coloured glass that works well with pine.

The originals were made in the Tiffany studio until the 1930s and are much sought after; several appear in museums in the US where they are prized as American classics. The highest price paid at auction for a Tiffany lamp was $2.8 million in 1997 in Christie’s. In 2013, at a specialist Tiffany auction in Sotheby’s, a wisteria pattern lamp sold for $1.56 million.