Handel Lamps: Painted Shades & Glassware. A Limited Edition.

Staten Island, NY: H & D Press, Inc., (1986). Quarto, black cloth (hardcover), ribbon marker, 254 pp. Very Good+, with light edgewear and speckling to endpapers; in a Fine (As New) dust jacket. From dust jacket: The fifty years spanning the turn of the 20th century witnessed unprecedented attention to the development of the decorative arts, employing the romantic ideas of the 19th century and the resources of the machine age. No medium better illustrates the successful combination of artistic design with technological advancement than decorative lighting. (truncated) Today’s art historians recognize two names as the forerunners in this branch of artistic manufacutre: Louis Comfort Tiffany and Phillip Julius Handel.Tiffany focused his attention on the leaded glass shades with which his name is now synonomous, and Handel his art on the painted lamp shades which have, in turn, become generically known as “Handel Lamps.” The Handel lamp tradition began exactly a century ago this year, in 1885, when Philip Handel established his small decorating studio in Meriden, Connecticut. This centennial commemorative volume is the first comprehensive record of the legacy of painted lamps and glassware left to us by The Handel Cojmpany, depicted in over 200 color and 50 black and white illustrations and described in a concise text. (Inventory #: els2604)