Someone Just Bought A Tiffany Lamp For $3.37 Million At Christie’s
Calling a light fixture "iconic" might seem a bit excessive, but when talking about a coveted Tiffany lamp, it's really the only adjective that makes sense. Especially since the most expensive one to be offered at auction in 20 years just sold for $3,372,500. Yes, there are, in fact, TWO commas in that price tag.
The sale of the 'Pond Lily' Table Lamp, which dates back to 1903, was auctioned off at Christie's in New York City on December 13. Original estimates expected the lamp to go for anywhere between $1.8 and $2.5 million dollars, already set it up setting it up to potentially become the priciest Tiffany lamp sold at an auction in the last two decades. But when it arrived at a final price of over $3.3 million, expectations were clearly blown, and a new record has been set.
Standing 26.5 inches tall and 18 inches wide, the lamp is made of leaded glass and patinated bronze and still has the early impressed tag on the shade which reads "TIFFANY STUDIOS NEW YORK" as well as a base with "TIFFANY STUDIOS NEW YORK 29555" impressed on it...so you know it's legit.
The Tiffany Studios Pond Lily lamp is a particularly rare one as it was only produced from 1902 to 1906. Other lamps in this style reside permanently in five museums-the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, New York, the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass in Queens, New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in L.A., and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Additional lamps are held in eight other known private collections.
"Among these extant lamps, the present lot is one of the finest due to its artistic glass selection," Christie's shares, as well as "the significant patina of its bronze base, and the strong synergy between base and shade, which depicts pond lily stems, leaves and flowers floating in water.
According to a press release, the most valuable Tiffany ever sold prior to this Pond Lily was a $2.8 million "Pink Lotus," which sold at Christie's back in 1997. The last Pond Lily lamp to sell at Christie's was in 1989 and the final price was just $500,500-literally a fraction of today's price.
Now I can't help but wonder who the buyers are and what they are going to do with a $3.3 million lamp. Certainly they can't just keep it in their living room, can they? It should be bolted up in a safe for that price.
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