GUEST: I got it from my great-aunt, and I believe it's a Tiffany lamp. It has not been converted. I don't know about the shade, what the pattern is, and I would really like to learn how to work it.
APPRAISER: This is a Tiffany student lamp. This border here is referred to as a vine border, although some people refer... have referred to it over the years as the acorn pattern. Most of the time you would get just a regular blown-glass shade on this. It's very unusual that you get a leaded glass shade. This is a very early lamp, and there is a very minute little Tiffany Studios stamp here on the shade.
GUEST: Excellent. I couldn't find it.
APPRAISER: And this is before 1900, probably. Now, Tiffany Studios didn't have their own foundry early on, so they would sub out some of the bronze work. It has a little mark here, five-digit mark, so that indicates to me that there's a very good chance that this was a very early Tiffany Studios foundry base.
GUEST: Wow!
APPRAISER: Now, it's all original condition. This is just gorgeous to see. Great decoration here. It has not been electrified. These were all for... This is the kerosene compartment. If you wanted to maintain it as an oil lamp, there are clean-burning, smokeless burning oils.
GUEST: Because it puts off the black smoke.
APPRAISER: Yeah, and then you'd want to get a new wick here, but there's remnants of the old wick. But this would have had a glass chimney that would have come up through this hole. Your shade holder is a little askew, as you know. Now, that's something that you'd want to take to somebody very good to have it corrected. Now, if someone were to buy this, they would probably want to electrify it. If this were very competently changed over to electricity without compromising its original integrity, I don't think it would affect the value really at all. Although it might slightly increase it for a certain segment of the market, because then you have the easy-on ability to light up the shade. And then cleaning, just a light cleaning of the patinated bronze would bring up the beauty of this lamp. These early lamps in this condition don't bring the huge amount of money that the big, big shades do. Do you have any idea of what it's worth?
GUEST: I have no idea. I was thinking maybe $1,000, $2,000.
APPRAISER: Okay, I think easy, $8,000 to $10,000.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness!
APPRAISER: And maybe a little bit more. We don't see the very early lamps very often here, and it's a joy to see it.
GUEST: Thank you so much! I'm so excited!
