Edward Peck Sperry: Gilded Age artistry rooted in Woodbridge family heritage
Among the many descendants of Woodbridge’s founding families, Edward Peck Sperry (1851–1925) stands out as a bridge between old New England craftsmanship and the dazzling artistry of the Gilded Age. A 5th great-grandson of Richard Sperry (1606-1698) and his wife Dennis (1624-1707), Edward was part of ‘That Great Sperry Family’ that shaped the town's early history. But unlike the generations before him who worked the land and built homes and businesses in the hills of Woodbridge, Edward found his calling in the ethereal world of stained glass, helping to define the artistic legacy of one of America’s most famous decorative arts firms, Tiffany & Company.
In a previous essay, we focused on the Sperry family members who lived on Richard and Dennis Sperry's land that spanned the Woodbridge-New Haven border, where a grist mill was operated from 1794 by one of their great-great-grandsons, Levi Sperry. Levi's brother, Eliakim Sperry, Sr. (1752-1815) and his wife Molly Clark (1757-1844), who also lived in this area, had at least five children between 1779 and 1798 and their son Eliakim Sperry, Jr. (abt. 1779 - 1828) married Naomi Platt (abt 1779 - 1848) in 1802. She was a daughter of Deacon Nathan Peck and his wife Deborah Peck.
Eliakim, Jr. was a well-known builder in the early 1800s in the New Haven area — a newspaper account noted that he “erected the North church, and [his] home on the ‘Sperry Farms’ was nearly opposite the famous Judges' cave, whose persecuted followers the first Richard Sperry provided with food.” The newlywed couple raised their family of six sons (born between 1802 and 1820) in Woodbridge. But the family’s story is a poignant reminder of the fragility of life in the early 19th-century as they soon experienced a decade of loss between 1828 and 1837.
Their second-born son, Bevil, was the first to pass, dying on May 11, 1828, at about 24-years-old. Just five months later, on October 16, 1828, Eliakim himself died, leaving Naomi widowed with four surviving sons. Then, only two months after his father's death, Elizur, the third-born son, passed away on December 22, 1828.
Sorrow visited the family again in August 1830 with the death of their fifth son, Bennet, followed by the death of Albert T., the first-born son, who died less than two years later on May 9, 1832, at age 31. Finally, Platt, the fourth son, died on December 28, 1837, at about 20 years old. Naomi carried the weight of these losses until her passing on September 13, 1848, when she was interred beside her family members at Eastside Cemetery.
Of Eliakim and Naomi’s six children, only the youngest, Peck Sperry — the artist Edward Peck Sperry's father — survived to marry and have a family of his own. When Peck passed away in 1890, a lengthy obituary appeared in the New Haven Journal and Courier detailing his career and service as a veteran of the New Haven Grays, the regiment in which his son Edward also served.
Earlier this week, I visited the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and came across some items that got me thinking about Edward Peck Sperry and his connection to the Tiffany Company during the Gilded Age. In Gallery 774 in the collection housed in the American Wing's Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, a display depicted both the tools of the artist's trade at this time and a description of the artistic and production process.
From the museum's display: “The making of a Tiffany Studios lampshade involved the expertise of many craftsmen. The initial design was presented as a small-scale watercolor rendering that, once approved, was translated to a full-size cartoon. The heavy outlines represent the leading that held the pieces of glass together. One design was repeated three times around the shade, so only one-third of the individual shapes are numbered and correspond to cardboard or thin brass templates.”
In the late 19th century, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), the son of Tiffany and Company founder Charles Lewis Tiffany, revolutionized stained glass, rejecting the flat-painted styles of European tradition in favor of rich opalescent glass, layering colors to create depth and luminosity. Edward Peck Sperry became a part of this innovation when he joined Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company in 1888, where he remained for fourteen years. During this time, he contributed to the company’s remarkable range of ecclesiastical and memorial windows, as well as secular commissions that adorned grand American homes and institutions.
Tiffany’s workshops, like the one captured in the photograph above taken at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were hubs of creative energy, where artisans and designers worked with molten glass, leading, and intricate patterning to create luminous masterpieces. These images illustrate the setting where Edward honed his skills, shaping some of the finest stained-glass windows of the era. His meticulous craftsmanship helped Tiffany achieve its signature effects — jewel-like color saturation and unparalleled depth.
Despite his immersion in the world of decorative glass, Edward’s ties to New Haven and Yale remained strong. Before his time at Tiffany, he studied at the Yale School of the Fine Arts in 1875, though he would not receive his B.F.A. degree until 1903. His education also took him overseas to Paris and the American Academy in Rome, refining the artistic eye that he later applied to stained-glass design.
His work can still be found in Yale’s collections today, preserved and accessible through the LUX: Yale Collections Discovery platform. This digital resource, which compiles objects from across Yale’s museums, archives, and libraries, is a goldmine for those interested in New Haven’s artistic history. Edward’s windows and design contributions, cataloged in LUX, serve as a lasting testament to his role in shaping late 19th- and early 20th-century American stained-glass traditions.
Sketches for stained glass art by Edward Peck Sperry; Job (from the LOC collection), and Saint Andrew, The Resurrection, and The Nativity (from the Internet Archive).
After his tenure at Tiffany, Edward’s career continued at Gorham & Co., where he served as chief stained-glass designer, and later, he co-founded the Church Glass & Decorating Company. His commissions included memorial windows in Pilgrimage Congregational Church (Plymouth, MA), St. Eustace’s Church (Lake Placid, NY), and the Dr. Trudeau Memorial in Saranac, NY. These later works reflected his mature style—rich in color, intricate in composition, and deeply narrative.
However, as the years passed, his health declined. During World War I, he contributed his skills to the Naval Camouflage Staff in New York City, yet by 1922, worsening health forced him to retreat to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There, he spent his final years working on fabric designs (cretonnes) and studying floral motifs, though failing eyesight eventually halted his artistic output.
On September 19, 1925, Edward Peck Sperry passed away in Stockbridge. He was laid to rest in Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, a fitting final home near Yale, the institution that helped shape his early career.
Although Edward and his wife Dora Morgan Sperry did not have children, his legacy endures — not only in the windows that still glow in churches and institutions across the country but in the ever-deepening historical record that continues to reveal his influence. With resources like the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in NY and LUX at Yale, we can continue to uncover and celebrate the work of artists like Edward Peck Sperry, whose creative lineage began here in Woodbridge, among the branches of that great Sperry family tree.