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This is a story about family and fame and fortune and famous names. It begins a century ago in Corona, and 100 years later it's literally right back in the same neighborhood where it all started, in the form of a permanent exhibit of Tiffany lamps at the Queens Museum of Art.
The plot begins way back in 1894, when a Manhattan youngster named John Dikeman was told by his father to walk over to Corona and get a job at the art-glass factory of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Well, little John went there, but he didn't get the job. A year later, he was rebuffed once more, and he was standing on the Corona corner shivering in the winter cold trying to decide what to do.
"What are you doing here?" a distinguished-looking stranger asked.
"I've been trying to get a job, but they won't hire me," John said.
"Come with me," said Tiffany, never dreaming that the little boy he hired to sweep the floors would one day become the head of his fabled lamp department or that Dikeman and his family would dedicate their lives to keeping the Tiffany legend alive.
When Tiffany sold the factory in 1928, he gave John Dikeman all his tools, glass, molds and supplies so that he could carry on restoration work. Dikeman, in turn, taught his son Frank everything he knew.
But it wasn't until Frank met and married Nancylee in 1947 that things really started...