Table Lamp

The Fulper Pottery was one of the most prolific, successful, and long-lasting art potteries in America. Fulper had operated in Flemington, New Jersey, producing utilitarian stoneware since the early nineteenth century. It was not until 1909 that the firm developed an artistic line, called "Vasekraft," under the direction of William Hill Fulper II (1872-1928), in whose family the lamp descended. The majority of its production was simple solid oriental shapes with brilliantly colored glazes. Fulper lamps-with glazed pottery shades inset with colored glass-were truly innovative forms. The firm's most spectacular and innovative accomplishments are the table lamps made with glazed pottery bases and shades, which were inset with pieces of colored opalescent glass. This ambitious example, one of only two known of this design, features a shade in the most complex pattern made by the factory. The glass-filled openings delineate dragonflies and water lilies, motifs favored at the same time by noted glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. Evoking the natural watery environment of the insects and plants, the lamp is sheathed in a rich Chinese blue flambé glaze.