Art Nouveau Style Lamp

JP sends me a fabulous art nouveau style figural lamp for the table, a nude woman supported by a peacock. The outstretched arm of the woman holds the light fixture: a globe shape, encrusted with jewel-like crystals, that glows when lit. JP is wondering if this is “something.”

In the history of lighting design, well, yes, it is something. Because in the first quarter of the 20th century, the era of Art Nouveau in Europe, for some reason early lamp makers focused on the idea that seminude, nubile young females should be both the subject, and the “holders of the light,” for the newfangled thing called a “lamp.”

Because the Art Nouveau period was a high point for naturalistic, organic (think non-geometrical) lines, and since the period loved the exoticism of the female nude – and the association of the nude to nature – oftentimes lamp makers included a bronze of the nude with a certain type of shade; for example, a Nautilus shell, or a bronze shade encased with pinpoints of jewels, such as in JP’s lamp. The reasons for this were many: it was a way to celebrate the beauty of the nude in a tasteful, novel way (electric lights were new), and it was a way to celebrate the fact that electricity was “illuminating” the ability to showcase the nubile female. 

Here is a great example. The original was made (1910) for the bar of the Adam’s Mark Hotel, the seminude bronze figure into which the electricity was channeled; she (a bronze elegantly draped figure) held a lantern in miniature, lit by a bulb. This served a few purposes: the bar, which was limited to males, could admire her form, and the bar, which was dark, needed to have light.

In the Art Nouveau period, the collision between the modern world of technology and the old world of beautiful sculpture resulted in the beautiful excessive elements of design. Only the very wealthy could afford a lamp, and indeed only the wealthy could afford electricity in their homes or businesses. I find it amusing that the people who could have such lighting preferred to use the semi-naked female form as the “lamp base!”

JP asks if her lamp is original to the period, and I do not think it is “period” (1900-1925) Art Nouveau, but a later copy from the 1980s when we had a resurgence of Art Nouveau in the U.S. Her lamp is “after” the design by Marcel Wolfers (Belgian 1886-1976); and when we say “after” we mean that someone got ahold of the mold or a lamp from 1910 by Wolfers, and made a plaster cast, then had it cast in bronze to sell on 1980s market… and yes, because there were so few copyright issues from that period, it was done. 

Some of the most notable lamps of the period were modeled on the great beauties of the age, 1900-1925, such as the actress Loïe Fuller (1901) inspired the lamp maker François-Raoul Larche. Fuller is reenacting a famous stage roll, in a lamp, seminude, and holding a globe which is lit in this small table lamp, and such a thing can sell for $4,000.

Another highly valued lamp is a famous beauty of the age holding aloft a nautilus shell, and that shell is the shade, and this will sell for $4,000. Art was a great excuse for female nudity.

One of the most interesting techniques of the era was to make the lightbulb itself part of the erotica. So, in some cases, the seminude is holding a lightbulb encased in a shell or encased in a globe in her hand, but perhaps the most inventive of all the techniques was to have the light ‘glow up’ inside her skirts (not her skirts, but the bronze of the nude’s skirts) showing both her form, her legs, and allowing the peep show to also be an actual lamp. Such a one is a lamp done in 1910 by the lamp maker Laporte-Blairsy, where a wonderfully semi-clothed actress, who is playing a Classical role (draped in Grecian flowing robes) is caught in the act of spinning, the robes swirling metaphorically outward. Thus, this outward arch of her robes is the perfect shade for the 1910 lightbulb! A lamp like this will sell for $4,000-5,000. 

JP’s lamp, because it is a 1980s recast, is still valuable, but at $500, a far cry from the original of which many were made in San Francisco in the 1910s
at $4,000.