What material did Louis Comfort Tiffany use in his famous Art Nouveau lamps?

Louis Comfort Tiffany used stained glass for his famous Art Nouveau lamps.

Tiffany lamps have colorful glass shades assembled from many individually cut pieces. Tiffany Studios commonly joined those pieces with the copper-foil technique: each fragment was wrapped in copper foil, fitted against neighboring pieces, and soldered into a patterned shade. This allowed intricate contours and detailed botanical designs that were difficult to achieve with traditional lead came.

The lamps often used opalescent glass, whose layered or milky colors could shift with the light. Popular motifs included wisteria, dragonflies, peacock feathers, flowers, butterflies, and geometric patterns. Tiffany’s workshops employed teams of designers and artisans, so not every celebrated lamp was designed personally by Tiffany; Clara Driscoll is especially associated with important lamp designs.

Commercially produced Tiffany lamps emerged in the 1890s and remained fashionable into the early 20th century. “Tiffany-style” now describes many later stained-glass lamps, including replicas, so a colorful glass shade is not automatically an original Tiffany Studios work.