Martin Eidelberg

Background

Eidelberg, Martin was born on January 30, 1941 in New York City. Son of Harry W. and Anna E. (Klein) E. Bachelor of Arts, Columbia University, 1961.

Education

A native of New York, Eidelberg attended Columbia University, where he graduated cum laude in 1961. He then attended Princeton University, where he studied art history. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1965 with a thesis titlde "Watteau’s Drawings, Their Use and Significance".

Career

He is noted for discovering that many floral Tiffany lamp designs were not personally made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, but by an underpaid and unrecognized woman designer named Clara Driscoll. He taught at Rutgers University from 1964 until his retirement in 2002. Eidelberg was quoted in 2007 in The New York Times as saying "I think Tiffany would have died" if information had leaked out that Driscoll was the real designer of the famous lamps.

Eidelberg"s discovery led to an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, which garnered intense media attention.

The evidence arrived at the conclusion that Driscoll was the secret creative force behind design of the famous Tiffany lamps. The letters ultimately offered a new inside view of the workings of the studios.

Driscoll had been paid only $35 per week which was "good money" at the turn of the century, but small compared to the value of the lamps today. The Driscoll letters revealed the "inner workings of Tiffany Studios" and exposed more about the practice of gender segregation at the Tiffany firm.

Relations between the unionized men and the women were "not always friendly.

Eidelberg"s detective work led to a well-publicized exhibit called A New Light on Tiffany which revealed "a new understanding of the techniques and procedures used to produce the extraordinary objects that made Tiffany such an exalted name in American design."

In 1987, Eidelberg wrote what one reviewer called a "handsome, graphically arresting catalogue" entitled From Our Native Clay which traces the history of the art-pottery movement. In 1989, he curated a show on George East. Ohr, a "wizard at the potter"s wheel who made witty, frequently erotic paper-thin vessels in Biloxi, Mississippi"

He studied Antoine Watteau and eighteenth-century French painting. He has also written about artisans such as William H. Grueby, Artus van Briggle, Adelaide Alsop Robineau, South. Bing, and Edward Colonna.

In 2009, Eidelberg was Professor Emeritus of Art History at Rutgers University.

In 2010, he co-curated the exhibition "Die Jugend der Moderne-Jugendstil und Art Nouveau aus Muenchner Privatbesitz" in the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany.

Achievements

• Martin Eidelberg has been listed as a noteworthy art history educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls

    ( Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) is celebrated today a...)

  • Behind the Scenes of Tiffany Glassmaking: The Nash Notebooks

    ( Everyone knows the beauty and value of Tiffany glass la...)

  • Masterworks of Louis Comfort Tiffany

    (The full range os Tiffanys versatility is brough to light)

  • Behind the Scenes of Tiffany Glassmaking -The Nash Notebooks

Connections

Father:

Harry West. Bachelor of Arts

Mother:

Anna East. (Klein) East. Bachelor of Arts