TIFFANY, Louis Comfort

The languidly aqueous appearance of this window by Louis Comfort Tiffany’s firm suggests the transformation of molten glass providing an appropriately watery effect for images of undersea life. Borders of thick stone-like glass “jewels” and multiple layers of wavy, twisted and rippled “drapery” coloured glass provide a setting for starfish, anemones, and other sea life to float suspended in the lower portions of the window. The upper segment reveals the placid surface of the ocean with the sky above.

Although themes of water and marine life would be revisited in some of his later Favrile vessels, enamels, and lamps, Tiffany produced very few windows with such aquatic scenes, and even fewer exhibiting such sophisticated abstraction as seen in this example and another similar one, the “Spring”. The pair, part of a suite that may have depicted the four seasons, demonstrate Tiffany’s appreciation of Japanese art and his innovative approach to stained glass design. Both windows show Tiffany at the height of his creative powers, experimenting with the texture and translucency of glass to create a masterful aquatic fantasy of colour and form. The window was manufactured by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.

The languidly aqueous appearance of this window by Louis Comfort Tiffany’s firm suggests the transformation of molten glass providing an appropriately watery effect for images of undersea life. Borders of thick stone-like glass “jewels” and multiple layers of wavy, twisted and rippled “drapery” coloured glass provide a setting for starfish, anemones, and other sea life to float suspended in the lower portions of the window. The upper segment reveals the placid surface of the ocean with the sky above.

Although themes of water and marine life would be revisited in some of his later Favrile vessels, enamels, and lamps, Tiffany produced very few windows with such aquatic scenes, and even fewer exhibiting such sophisticated abstraction as seen in this example and another similar one, the “Summer”. The pair, part of a suite that may have depicted the four seasons, demonstrate Tiffany’s appreciation of Japanese art and his innovative approach to stained glass design. Both windows show Tiffany at the height of his creative powers, experimenting with the texture and translucency of glass to create a masterful aquatic fantasy of colour and form. The window was manufactured by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.

Louis Comfort Tiffany began his artistic career as a painter, having studied with George Innes and Samuel Colman in America as well as with various artists in Paris. While he achieved some early success with his orientalist works, his interests were soon drawn to interior furnishings and design. Tiffany collaborated with other artisans to form Associated Artists in 1879 and began work on major commissions such as the Mark Twain House (1881) and the White House for President Chester Arthur (1882).

Tiffany debuted designs for furniture at the 1893 Chicago world’s fair, and this armchair is believed to have been among those pieces. Even after he achieved enormous success with his glass production, Tiffany continued to produce interior furnishings and design schemes for artistic interiors throughout the rest of his career.

In 1894, in cooperation with the eminent Parisian art dealer Siegfried Bing, Tiffany planned the production of glass windows based on designs created by French artists including Bonnard, Denis, Vallotton, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Just a year later the windows were presented at the Paris Salon on the Champ de Mars and at the opening of Bing’s gallery L’Art Nouveaux. Only a few are still in existence today, for example the present composition based on the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. Created in the flat poster style of Toulouse-Lautrec, it shows a detail from a circus scene.

In this window, commissioned for the Howell Hinds house around 1900, thousands of richly coloured glass pieces have been arranged and layered to paint an idyllic three-dimensional scene that would have warmly glowed in the afternoon sunlight. Located at 2200 Overlook Road in Cleveland, Ohio, the house was demolished in 1930 in a similar fate as other nearby estates. Photographs show the placement of the window in the drawing-room next to the fireplace as well as the opulent interiors Louis Comfort Tiffany designed for the library and dining room.

The window was made by Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, New York.

Louis Comfort Tiffany only produced a few hundred pieces of his art jewellery. The so-called “peacock” necklace in the Morse Museum is probably the designer’s most important existing work in the medium. Though reportedly designed for the debut of his line of art jewellery at the 1904 Universal Exposition in St. Louis, the peacock necklace was not exhibited until 1906 at the Soci�t� des Artistes Fran�ais in Paris. The front medallion features a peacock mosaic of opals and enamels surrounded by amethysts and sapphires. Exhibition pieces were finished on both sides, and the back of the necklace is an enamelled design of pink flamingoes.

Unlike the extravagant jewellery produced under the direction of Charles Tiffany at Tiffany & Co., Louis’s jewellery was distinguished by design and colour. He executed his innovative creations - many drawing from the organic forms that had inspired him in glass - using largely semiprecious stones and enamels. His father, on the other hand, had built a reputation using precious jewels purchased from post-revolution European royalty.

Louis Comfort Tiffany revolutionized the art of stained glass windows in late nineteenth-century America and led America to the forefront of this art form. His relentless pursuit of a brilliant range of colour meant endless experiments with adding metal oxides to the basic glass and manipulating and layering the finished product to produce just the right effect in a completed window.

From 1875 Tiffany experimented with stained-glass techniques. Disappointed by the poor quality of American glass, he set out to develop a technique to imitate and surpass the brilliant colour effects achieved by medieval stained-glass artists. His earliest glass was made exclusively for windows, which were incorporated into interior design schemes. In these windows, which were either geometric patterns or depictions of landscapes, Tiffany used metallic oxides to develop numerous colour gradations, while experimenting with various effects to create the appearance of wrinkled and folded surfaces. This was particularly effective to convey the rippled effect of water or clouds.

The windows shown here were produced in the Tiffany Studios. Originally made in 1905 for the Universalist Church of Our Father in Brooklyn, the windows were purchased by the All Souls Universalist Church in Brooklyn and installed in its sanctuary in 1945, where they remained until they came to the Brooklyn Museum.

On the one hand, the windows are realistic representations of two sylvan landscapes, using the inherent properties of translucent coloured glass to capture the subtle effects of changing light at dawn and dusk. On the other hand, in depicting a springtime wood at sunrise and an autumn wood at sunset, they also constitute an allegory of life and the passage of time.

This small table lamp, with a bronze base and three lily-shaped green-gold iridescent glass shades, was made in the Studio of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

In 1893, Louis Comfort Tiffany created a chapel interior for the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company exhibit at the Chicago world’s fair, officially called the World’s Columbian Exposition. A tour de force of design and virtuoso performance in the arts of mosaic and glass, the chapel was a sensation and brought the already successful designer to even greater heights of popularity both in America and abroad.

After the fair, Tiffany reinstalled the chapel at his studios in New York City. Then it was installed in a substantially different form in 1898 at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, also in New York City. Though used for services for about ten years, the chapel eventually fell into disrepair, its very existence threatened. In 1916, Tiffany reacquired the chapel, restored it, and installed it in a small building at his Long Island estate, Laurelton Hall. In 1959, twenty-six years after Tiffany’s death, Jeannette and Hugh McKean acquired the remains of the chapel at Laurelton Hall. In the years following, they reassembled virtually all of the furnishings and windows that had been dispersed.

Except for two of the four benches, all elements in the Museum’s chapel exhibit are original to Tiffany and most date from Chicago, 1893. These include the decorative mouldings, altar floor, carved plaster arches, marble and glass-mosaic furnishings, four leaded-glass windows, sixteen glass-mosaic encrusted columns, and a ten-foot by an eight-foot electrified chandelier. The non-historical parts of the chapel - walls, nave floor, and ceilings - are based on available knowledge of Tiffany’s installations at Laurelton Hall and Chicago.

The “stars” of Tiffany’s enormous product range were his lighting appliances, an absolutely central feature of the repertoire. In 1882, Tiffany had designed gaslighting for the White House and other important clients. Designing lights allowed him to combine all his main interests - his love of light effects of all kinds, of the iridescent interplay of colours, and glass as a material.

The photo shows the collection of Tiffany lamps in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

The languidly aqueous appearance of these windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany’s firm suggests the transformation of molten glass providing an appropriately watery effect for images of undersea life. Borders of thick stone-like glass “jewels” and multiple layers of wavy, twisted and rippled “drapery” coloured glass provide a setting for starfish, anemones, and other sea life to float suspended in the lower portions of the window. The upper segment reveals the placid surface of the ocean with the sky above.

Although themes of water and marine life would be revisited in some of his later Favrile vessels, enamels, and lamps, Tiffany produced very few windows with such aquatic scenes, and even fewer exhibiting such sophisticated abstraction as seen in these examples. The pair, part of a suite that may have depicted the four seasons, demonstrate Tiffany’s appreciation of Japanese art and his innovative approach to stained glass design. Both windows show Tiffany at the height of his creative powers, experimenting with the texture and translucency of glass to create a masterful aquatic fantasy of colour and form. The windows were manufactured by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.

Although Tiffany was not responsible for all the designs made for Tiffany Studios and did not actually make the glass produced in his workshops and studios, he closely supervised production. It was his overall approach to design - using sensuous and organic forms from nature in the Art Nouveau style - that dominated production. One of his most important assistants was Arthur J. Nash, whose technical skills, combined with Tiffany’s chemical discoveries, accounted for much of the company’s success. Nash played a very important role in the development of ‘Favrile’ glass, the company’s famous range of iridescent glass (registered trademark name, 1894); the production process involved treating the hot glass with metallic oxides that were absorbed into the glass to produce a luxurious, nacreous surface. Favrile glass was used for a variety of objects, including vases (e.g. the vase with peacock feather decoration in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and hanging- and table lamps in delicate shapes.

The shapes, colours, and finishes of Tiffany’s vases and plaques were inspired by the natural world and the ancient glass. The present vase is decorated with the peacock feather.

The mark on the underside of this vase indicates that this object was once part of Tiffany’s private collection. Less than 250 objects are so marked. Tiffany described the effects achieved here as created “by numerous glasses of various chemical constituents reacting one upon another.” This vase was part of a series with morning glories; the first one was exhibited at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Tiffany believed that nature should be the primary source of design inspiration and frequently experimented with new methods of glass manufacture to produce objects exhibiting a wide variety of colours and textures. By 1893, after almost 20 years of experimenting, Tiffany had made significant progress in the development of his new medium, which he ultimately called “favrile glass”.

The word favrile derives from the old English word fabrile, meaning “pertaining to the craftsman or his craft”. Tiffany’s favrile glass is composed of various colours of glass fused together while still in the molten state. The foundational technique developed by Tiffany was capable of a vast range of decorative effects. The term was trademarked by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company in 1894.

One of the most popular techniques resulted in the so-called peacock feather design, seen here. Tiffany first exhibited vases and plaques in this design at the Tiffany Studios in 1896, after a year-long series of experiments. Peacock glass was achieved by combining five different types of glass, two of which were aventurine, a form of quartz. Together, they produced feathers of shimmering blues and greens into which an opalescent “eye” could be inserted.

The present vase was made by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, Corona, New York.