For the past 35 years, I have devoted an enormous amount of time, research and energy to the proper restoration of Tiffany Studios Lamps. In the late 1960’s, I was introduced to my first original Tiffany lamp, a 16” dragonfly. It was in a lamp restorer's shop in my hometown and the shop owner was kind enough to befriend me and educate me on Tiffany.
In the 1970’s, I began restoring lamps and quickly found out that restoration glass was difficult to find. After many years of struggle to find glass, I decided to try making my own. Around that time, I found an old German glassmaker, named Greg Lins, in Central Florida, who instructed me on the art of making glass and the rest they say is history. I was hooked. I made glass with him for many years. The glass was very good but not good enough to match the glass found in Tiffany lamps and windows. Therefore, in 1993, I began to make my own glass. I focused on a small amount of great glass. It took several years and thousands of batches and decoding of original Tiffany glass recipes to get to where I am today. My clients as well as many professional lamp restorers tell me that the glass that I use in my own original lamps and windows and in my restorations is virtually undetectable in color, quality and texture from the original glass made by Tiffany
Please feel free to contact me anytime regarding new lamp and window commissions, restorations, and patinas. If you live in the Northeast and your shade needs a minor repair, I have a couple of local restorers, that I work with, that I can make glass available to so that you will not need to ship your repair item to Florida.
Thank you.
Glenn Pankiewicz
Tiffany Studios Lamps
Although this looks like fun, making glass is a lot of hard work. Here is a picture of my crew at the famous Lins glass foundry in the early 1980’s. We are ladling three separate glass batches to come together on the rolling table.
Making high coefficient opalescent glass mixes entails many facets. It’s not only glass chemistry, but it also requires knowledge of physics and thermal history to produce the desired outcome. Even then anomalies occur which can result in either very good or very poor glass. At this point I will save this seminar for the book. As I stated earlier, the most important part of any restoration is the glass. I don’t know how any glass studio can go to the rack of a commercial glass foundry and find what you need to correctly restore an original Tiffany Studios lamp or window. I know this because I have had to re-restore many lamps which have had poor attempts at glass selection or shoddy technique. Simply put, get it done right the first time!
Glenn Pankewich
Polish family name Pankiewicz
561-575-4721
561-301-1709
