Art
Tiffany Collection
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I OCTOBER 2017 41
BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
Egon and Hildegard Neustadt,
Austrian immigrants who began
collecting Tiffany glass lamps in
1935 to decorate their Flushing home,
have amassed the largest collection of
the rare pieces, and Queens residents
can now see them in Long Island City.
The couple amassed hundreds of
lamps, leaded-glass windows and bronze
desk sets from 1935 to 1984 when Egon
Hildegard died. The Queens Museum dis-plays
a portion of the collection, including
glass jewels that Neustadt bought when
the Tiffany studio closed in the 1930s.
In 1969, Egon Neustadt founded the
Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass and
his collection has been shared with the
Corning Museum of Glass and other insti-tutions.
A piece of the couple’s collection is
also stored in a warehouse in Long Island
City and Open House New York (OHNY)
gave people access to the space on Oct.
14 and 15.
OHNY gives New Yorkers access to the
city’s most impressive architectural spaces.
The Long Island City warehouse, which
houses the nonprofit Neustadt Collection
of Tiffany Glass at 5-26 46th Ave., holds
the couple’s archive of more than a quarter
of a million pieces of Tiffany sheet glass.
If you missed the OHNY tour, interested
parties can visit the Queens Museum or
make a reservation at the Long Island
City warehouse by contacting info@th-eneustadt.
org.
Louis C. Tiffany, the son of Charles Tif-fany
who founded Tiffany & Co., created
much of the pieces that the Neustadt’s
collected in a glasshouse in Corona. He
opened the factory in the 1890s and
revolutionized the look of stained glass.
Tiffany was able to create opalescent
glass, “a unique American phenomenon
that featured a milky, opaque, and some-times
rainbow-hued appearance with the
introduction of light,” according to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Neustadt’s collection started with
a stained-glass daffodil lampshade that
they found in a thrift store for $12.50. Hil-degard
Neustadt convinced her husband
to purchase the lamp and the collection
grew from there.
Photos courtesy of Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass
