Tiffany by Jacob Baal-Teshuva (2003-05-03)

This is an absolutely beautiful, glossy, full-color book full of lovely pictures of Tiffany's work. Worth the price.

I picked up this book from the bargain bin at my local bookstore, and I'm thrilled that I found it. The 350-page book itself is mostly photographs, though there's 60 pages of text giving a glass-centric biography of Louis Comfort Tiffany (in English, German, and French, so I think this was originally published in the U.K.). It's fine, but I doubt you'd be buying this for the text. Separate sections are devoted to Tiffany's leaded glass windows, lamps, and vases. There's only a caption for each picture ("Peony border floor lamp, circa 1910") with an eensy bit more info in the back of the book (usually the photo credit), so this won't help you identify the provenance of a rare item. It's a relatively small-format book, but the production work is good. About one in ten photographs also shows a detail of the item, so you can see the awesome quality of Tiffany's glass, and the difficulty of cutting some of those pieces. And BOY are those photos gorgeous! The collection isn't exhaustive (there's one bamboo window I've seen photos of elsewhere that isn't included, for instance) but you certainly get a good idea of the man's (and his company's) output.