Tiffany Studios New York "Cobweb and Apple Blossom" Tea Screen
Tiffany Studios was renowned for transforming everyday household objects into works of art. This tea screen, while functional in shielding the flame beneath a teapot, was conceived primarily as an ornamental piece, inspired by the byōbu, or traditional Japanese folding screen. It represents a rare and exquisite variation of Tiffany’s most expensive lamp—the Apple and Cobweb—designed prior to 1902.
The cobweb motif held a long-standing place in Tiffany’s design repertoire, first appearing in 1881 in a series of textile and wallpaper patterns created for the Mark Twain House. For that commission, Tiffany collaborated with Candace Wheeler to produce a suite of “Japanesque” textiles featuring clematis vines, seedpods, and honeybees caught in intricate webs. The design itself was rooted in an 18th-century Japanese pattern of maple leaves entangled in spider webs—a theme later reinterpreted by the artist Katsushika Hokusai in One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, where the mountain is seen through a spider’s web.
Item #: YT-22207
Artist: Tiffany Studios New York
Country: United States
Circa: 1910
Dimensions: 8.75" height, 12.5" width.
Materials: Leaded Glass, Bronze
Literature: Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, p. 434, no. 1766
Item #: YT-22207
Artist: Tiffany Studios New York
Country: United States
Circa: 1910
Dimensions: 8.75" height, 12.5" width.
Materials: Leaded Glass, Bronze
Literature: Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Lamps and Metalware, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2019, p. 434, no. 1766
Driscoll’s fire screen translates this poetic imagery into glass. Streaky glass is arranged so that its striations radiate outward from the center of the web, evoking a sense of motion and delicacy. The gossamer web is formed by a tangle of hand-pulled streamers—threads of molten glass drawn from the end of a punty (pontil rod), then rapidly swung and stretched. These are pressed into the surface of the molten glass sheet during the rolling process, becoming permanently embedded in the composition. In select areas, fine green wafers of fracture glass are incorporated, mimicking scattered foliage caught in the web’s silken strands. The result is a masterful fusion of glassmaking technique and poetic naturalism, capturing the ephemeral beauty of nature in a fixed medium. As both functional object and aesthetic statement, this tea screen exemplifies Tiffany Studios’ ability to elevate the everyday into the realm of fine art.
Driscoll’s fire screen translates this poetic imagery into glass. Streaky glass is arranged so that its striations radiate outward from the center of the web, evoking a sense of motion and delicacy. The gossamer web is formed by a tangle of hand-pulled streamers—threads of molten glass drawn from the end of a punty (pontil rod), then rapidly swung and stretched. These are pressed into the surface of the molten glass sheet during the rolling process, becoming permanently embedded in the composition. In select areas, fine green wafers of fracture glass are incorporated, mimicking scattered foliage caught in the web’s silken strands. The result is a masterful fusion of glassmaking technique and poetic naturalism, capturing the ephemeral beauty of nature in a fixed medium. As both functional object and aesthetic statement, this tea screen exemplifies Tiffany Studios’ ability to elevate the everyday into the realm of fine art.
