Dragonfly
Louis Comfort Tiffany was not the founder of the iconic jewelry store Tiffany & Co., but was the son of its founder, Charles Lewis Tiffany. What strange family dynamic would have a father with a middle name spelled in a different manner than the given first name of his son? Louis was the first design director of Tiffany & Co., but by that time he was an accomplished artist in several mediums including painting and then, most notably, stained glass. He had become famous designing the interior of Mark Twain’s home in Hartford, Connecticut and then a large part of the interior redecoration of the White House for President Chester Arthur. He is responsible for the Red Room, the Blue Room, the East Room and the State Dining Room. He may be the foremost American designer and was certainly the most significant American Art Nouveau artist.
I have never been much of an art collector, but I knew someone who was a big fan of Art Nouveau and had started collecting Tiffany lamps, perhaps the most emblematic form of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s work. This was forty-five or so years ago and even by then, the collection they had amassed of Tiffany’s work was prodigious. The collecting had occurred over the prior twenty years so it was fairly early in the cycle of fame for and regard for Tiffany’s art. These lamps were purchased for hundreds rather than thousands of dollars and all ended up to have appreciated by unimaginable amounts. By the time I knew the collectors, their modest home could no longer house the collection for fear of the prohibitive insurance costs. There were some 23 Tiffany lamps in all and the final disposition of the collection had Sothebys and Christies falling all over themselves to bid on representing the amassed collection. It was fun to imagine the look on the faces of the competing curators with their Upper East Side noses in the air coming to this modest suburban Long Island home in their limousines to inspect and bid on these works. What the neighbors must have thought.
I had the opportunity to get a glimpse into this world of what is now considered rarified great art. There were many well-known designs used by Tiffany in his stained glass lamps. I remember that the most rare and largest was the Wisteria lamp, which hung as though from a trellis down the sides of the lamp. The Pink Lotus lamp was the most rare of Tiffany’s creations and one recently sold at auction for $2.8 million, but I still think the Wisteria, which regularly sell for more than $1 million are the most elegant. If you study the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, you will very quickly come to recognize that one of his favorite lamp patterns is called The Dragonfly. It had a set of four or five downward-facing dragonflies set on a conical lampshade with the wings spread wide to form the bulk of the lampshade with the slender bodies all pointing skyward. The recognizable four wings of the dragonfly are spread outward from the body, the distinguishing feature that makes this a dragonfly rather than a damselfly (whose wings are most often folded against their bodies). Tiffany probably liked the lacy nature of the dragonfly wings in that they afforded good bronze structure for the lampshade while allowing a variety of colorful inserts of glass throughout. They also had large, usually red, protruding eyes that jump out of the lampshade at you.
The dragonfly has been the subject of man’s art for millennia and can be found on the walls of caves as well as in pottery, paintings and delicate statues. The insects are mesmerizing based on their body structure, their rapid and flitting movements, their distinct buzzing sound and their variety of colorings. In folklore around the world they are sometimes seen as sinister and other times as symbols of strength and happiness. It is small wonder that an aesthete like Louis Comfort Tiffany would adopt them as one of his artistic symbols. If you are fortunate enough to have a Tiffany Dragonfly lamp in your home, you can be sure that visitors will nod approvingly of your good taste and refined sensibilities.
I’ve remembered all this about the Tiffany Dragonfly because I have somehow acquired a true red dragonfly around my spa and patio these past few weeks. I understand that most dragonflies only live in their winged form for a limited number of weeks though they can be around in larval form for much longer. I am used to green dragonflies from my youth in Ithaca and I would certainly find nothing unusual in seeing one there. But I am surprised to see a dragonfly here on this hilltop and especially surprised to see a red one. As you may recall, I have chosen to accent the house here in cayenne or paprika red. We have that on all the umbrellas here at the spa and down on the games area. We have it on the large shadesail that adorns the upper driveway and covers what I call Tortilla Flats. It is the color of our deck upholstery and the color of all of our doors into the house now. We have clearly taken a point of view that this color of red goes well with our hilltop, so maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised to find a red dragonfly.
I think of dragonflies as being associated with places with water, like around lakes and ponds and rivers and maybe even marshes (I cannot use the word swamp because it has such a negative connotation to me). I do not think of our hilltop as a Waterworld, but rather as a very dry cactus-filled chaparral to which we have added some water-loving flowering plants. The Valley Center Water District has recognized that I like using more water than this property’s prior residents as they have seen my usage and my bill rise considerably. I suppose I should feel guilty what with the Western megadrought and all. I have called my irrigation guy, Andre, and asked him to come by to help me design a conservation effort now that everything is firmly rooted. I am afraid that there are two states on this hillside, watered and lush versus dry and dead. I can see it on some plants on my back hillside. Those close enough to the sprinkler head are prospering, the one about three feet outside the sprinkler’s reach is dry and wilting.
I somehow feel that this dragonfly is here to give me a message. I think he wants to tell me that what I’m doing is wonderful but perhaps misguided. He should probably not be living on this sort of hillside. Maybe he should not even be colored red. I assume he is living near the spa, just like that little frog that starts to sing at us every evening from the spa area. I may cut back on my flower watering, but I am far less inclined to give up my spa. As it is, I think a spa is much more eco-friendly than a pool and pools abound out here in Southern California. So maybe my curtailment of the watering program won’t have as much impact on the dragonfly population as I think. Maybe all they need is the spa to make this a habitable hillside for their kind. And maybe red is their best adaptive coloring for the environs. For now that is what I choose to believe and I will simply enjoy my dragonfly whenever he chooses to flit around me by the patio,