A Tiffany lamp drawing shows why the object record matters

Louis Comfort Tiffany, Design for a Lamp, 19th–20th century. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Gift of Sandra and Peter Butler, 2007.32. Public domain per Mia. Original image unchanged. Actual watercolor on paper from Mia’s collection, showing a floral lampshade, stem, leaf-shaped base and handwritten annotations. Mia records Louis Comfort Tiffany as artist and dates the sheet broadly to the 19th–20th century; the image-capture date is unstated. This is not a photograph of a finished lamp or a Met exhibition installation, and no loan to The Met is claimed. Object and image source · Mia image-use policy.

A floral lampshade fills the centre of a watercolor sheet. Below it are a dark stem, a leaf-shaped base and handwritten notes. Before imagining the finished object, look at the record attached to this drawing. It tells us who the museum names, how broadly it dates the work and what kind of evidence the image can provide. That is a useful habit for anyone sharing a design beyond the studio that made it.

Start with this particular sheet

Minneapolis Institute of Art catalogues this work as Design for a Lamp, by Louis Comfort Tiffany: watercolor on paper, dated to the 19th–20th century. Its accession number is 2007.32, and the credit line records a gift from Sandra and Peter Butler. The record transcribes a client annotation naming Mrs. Fanny Shapiro and a Louis C. Tiffany signature. These are the museum’s recorded details, not a PING authentication of the handwriting or evidence that a matching lamp was manufactured. Read the object record.

The whole sheet matters. Its margins, notes and drawn base make this a working design record rather than a product photograph. The image allows a reader to inspect the proposed form and its labels; it does not show the glass, construction or light of a completed lamp. Mia’s record does not give an image-capture date, and its broad creation date should stay broad when the drawing is reused.

A current exhibition puts collaboration in view

The Met’s Designing the Gilded Age exhibition is a timely reason to revisit that distinction. It opened on 22 October and runs through 7 February 2027. The museum describes drawings alongside finished works and highlights the contributions of designers including Agnes Northrop, Clara Driscoll, Julia Munson, Frederick Wilson and Jacob Holzer. This is the museum’s account, not a PING visit or a claim that the Mia drawing is on loan to the exhibition. Exhibition · July announcement.

On 4 November, The Met published a short feature connecting a Northrop watercolor to its Autumn Landscape window. That is a specific design-to-object relationship identified by the museum. It involves different works from the Mia lamp drawing shown here. A similar-looking motif alone would not establish a connection. The museum’s video is a viewing source, not footage that PING has cleared for an edit. Northrop feature.

Preserve the gaps in the credit

Another Met record gives the problem a useful edge. Design for Interior, First Presbyterian Church, Poughkeepsie, New York, dated 1906–08, lists Louis C. Tiffany as artist, Tiffany Studios as maker and an unidentified designer. A familiar studio name does not fill that missing individual role. Keep the separate fields and the uncertainty, rather than assigning the sheet to a named collaborator because their work appears elsewhere in the show. The specific record.

Give the next reader a usable record

For a furniture maker in Accra, a design student in Lagos or a studio team in London, the practical exercise is small. Keep an image with its object title, maker and designer fields, source, date and revision. Separate a proposal from a completed commission. When an individual contribution is unknown, say so; when a record changes, retain where the earlier attribution came from. These are PING’s suggested working habits, not a claim about any named local project.

The image record also needs a use decision. Mia identifies this exact drawing as Public Domain and its policy permits reuse of such images, including commercially. Our credit acknowledges the artist, museum, accession and gift. It does not turn every Tiffany or Met image into freely reusable media. We retained the actual full-resolution museum file unchanged, with the sheet’s edges and annotations visible. Mia Open Access.

Yale’s listing gives 10 November 2026 as the catalogue’s publication date. That is a future publisher-listed date at this check, separate from the exhibition opening; PING has not read or reviewed the book. The useful work can begin with the public object records already available. Catalogue listing.

Keep the drawing, the named people and the unresolved roles together. The result is a design story another reader can inspect, rather than an image carrying more certainty than its record. For a related maker-credit question, read PING’s Kate Faulkner article.