Four More Chairs with Peacock Finials

by Lita Solis-Cohen

As the news spread that $390,400 was paid at Rago's December 5, 2009, sale in Lambertville, New Jersey, for a pair of throne-like chairs decorated with Tiffany glass mosaics and hooded peacock finials (see M.A.D., January 2010, p. 11-A), people wondered if they were unique.

Jeni Sandberg, Tiffany specialist at Christie's, said, "I remember selling chairs with hooded peacock finials and some inset of Tiffany glass when I worked at Doyle's eight years ago." She was referring to the four large chairs that sold at Doyle New York on February 7, 2001, and that might be from the same workshop. The chairs, with four carved peacock finials and a small square of glass mosaic inlay where the stiles meet the rails, sold for $2800 (est. $4000/6000).

New York City dealer Martin Cohen bought the Doyle chairs. A call to Cohen brought forth photographs of the chairs stripped of their ugly yellow upholstery. Cohen said he went down to Rago's to examine the $390,400 chairs, and they are definitely from the same shop. A comparison of Cohen's photographs of his chairs with the images of the Rago chairs suggests the carving and the glass inlay are the same.

"The scale of my chairs is huge, much larger than the Rago chairs," Cohen volunteered. "I've had them in my barn because they are too large to fit through a normal size door, forty-eight inches high and thirty inches square. They were probably used in a grand entrance hall. I never had them restored because of their scale."

Cohen said that when the chairs at Rago brought so much money, because at least three people thought they were from the studio of L.C. Tiffany, it was an early Christmas present for him. "They make mine more valuable, even though my chairs have much less glass inlay."

"The carving is the same," said Cohen. "I have never claimed mine are Tiffany, but they may be. But how many cabinetmakers do you think were working in New York at the same time as Tiffany? Tiffany rooms were reproduced in books and magazines. Weren't his designs knocked off?" he asked.

Before the Rago sale, David Rago had asked Roberta Mayer, author of Lockwood de Forest: Furnishing the Gilded Age with a Passion for India (2009), to write a report about the chairs he was about to sell. De Forest was in partnership with Tiffany from 1878 until 1882.

Mayer identified them as Aesthetic Movement chairs from the 1880's or 1890's, most certainly custom-made for an elite patron. She was not willing to say they were definitely Tiffany, although she did write that they are similar to furniture associated with or executed by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), noting their "overall boxy form compares with an armchair that Tiffany provided for the main entrance hall of the H.O. Havemeyer house in New York City in 1891-92."

Mayer was referring to a Havemeyer armchair, no longer extant but photographed and its glass mosaic inlay described in contemporary accounts. She also noted that a peacock mosaic was part of an overmantel in the Havemeyer house, and that the arcade motif in the back of the chair and below the seat rails was used by Tiffany.

"Having worked on de Forest, I know people bought de Forest woodwork and incorporated it into their own designs," said Mayer in a phone interview.

Is it possible that Tiffany sold carved woodwork and glass to others? More study may solve the mystery.

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