Frank Lloyd Wright’s Double Pedestal Lamp has set a new auction high by selling for $7.5 million at Sotheby’s on May 13, 2025. Designed in 1903 for the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, the Prairie style fixture features opalescent and iridized glass panels in a repeating sumac pattern and hinged side panels that recall Japanese shoji screens.
On May 13, 2025, Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction in New York saw Frank Lloyd Wright’s Double Pedestal Lamp fetch $7.5 million, the highest price ever paid for a Wright object at auction. This result eclipsed the $2.9 million achieved in 2023 by a ceiling light from the Francis W. Little House in Peoria, Illinois.
Frank Lloyd Wright conceived the lamp around 1903 for the 12,000-square-foot Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, and engaged the Linden Glass Company in Chicago to produce it circa 1904. Only two examples remain: the one sold at Sotheby’s and a second held by the Dana-Thomas House museum, which features more than 100 pieces of Wright-designed furniture alongside over 450 art glass elements.
The lamp’s brass-plated zinc frame supports opalescent and iridized glass panels in gold, green, blue, and purple. Its geometric panes form a repeating sumac pattern drawn from prairie plantings. Hinged blue-green side panels reference Japanese shoji screens, a motif Wright admired during his visits to Japan.
“It is quite impossible to consider the building as one thing, its furnishings another, and its setting and environment still another,” Wright wrote. “The spirit in which these buildings are conceived sees all these together at work as one thing.”
Susan Lawrence Dana granted Wright a blank check to transform her late father’s home into a unified environment spanning 35 rooms.
Eric Rogers of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy observes, “When Susan Lawrence Dana commissioned Wright to oversee the transformation of an existing home in Springfield, Illinois, the result was not just a building – it was a complete work of art.”
Jodi Pollack, Sotheby’s co-worldwide head of twentieth-century design, calls the sale “not only a remarkable piece of American design but a landmark moment in the legacy of one of the most visionary architects in history.” She adds, “A true testament to his genius, the lamp stands as a beacon of the American pursuit of design, innovation, and progress that reflects Wright’s lasting influence on American architecture and culture.”
Last offered at Christie’s in 2002, the lamp sold then for $2 million. Its new record underlines the growing demand for Wright’s custom furnishings and his belief in an integrated vision of architecture and decor.
