Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 – January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art NouveauLander, David "The Buyable Past: Quezal Glass" '' American Heritage'' (April/May 2006) and Aesthetic movements. He was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and
Samuel Colman
Samuel Colman (March 4, 1832 – March 26, 1920) was an American painter, interior designer, and writer, probably best remembered for his paintings of the Hudson River.
Life and career
Born in Portland, Maine, Colman moved to New York City ...
. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewellery, enamels, and metalwork. He was the first design director at his family company, Tiffany & Co., founded by his father
Charles Lewis Tiffany
Charles Lewis Tiffany (February 15, 1812 – February 18, 1902) was an American businessman and jeweler who founded New York City's Tiffany & Co. in 1837. Known for his jewelry expertise, Tiffany created the country's first retail catalog and ...
.
__TOC__
Early life
Louis Comfort Tiffany was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, the son of
Charles Lewis Tiffany
Charles Lewis Tiffany (February 15, 1812 – February 18, 1902) was an American businessman and jeweler who founded New York City's Tiffany & Co. in 1837. Known for his jewelry expertise, Tiffany created the country's first retail catalog and ...
Eagleswood Military Academy
The Eagleswood Military Academy was a private military academy in Perth Amboy, in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States, which served antebellum educational needs.
The Eagleswood Military Academy was started by Rebecca Spring (1812–1911) ...
in
Perth Amboy, New Jersey
Perth Amboy is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Perth Amboy is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 55,436. Perth Amboy has a Hispanic majority population. In the 2010 census, th ...
. His first artistic training was as a painter, studying under
George Inness
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent American landscape painter.
Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced by the Hudson River School at the s ...
Samuel Colman
Samuel Colman (March 4, 1832 – March 26, 1920) was an American painter, interior designer, and writer, probably best remembered for his paintings of the Hudson River.
Life and career
Born in Portland, Maine, Colman moved to New York City ...
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
in New York City in 1866–67 and with salon painter Leon-Adolphe-Auguste Belly in 1868–69. Belly's landscape paintings had a great influence on Tiffany.
Career
Tiffany started out as a painter, but became interested in
glass
Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling ( quenching ...
making from about 1875 and worked at several glasshouses in Brooklyn between then and 1878. In 1879 he joined with Candace Wheeler,
Samuel Colman
Samuel Colman (March 4, 1832 – March 26, 1920) was an American painter, interior designer, and writer, probably best remembered for his paintings of the Hudson River.
Life and career
Born in Portland, Maine, Colman moved to New York City ...
, and Lockwood de Forest to form ''Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated American Artists''. The business was short-lived, lasting only four years. The group made designs for wallpaper, furniture, and textiles. He later opened his own glass factory in
Corona, New York
Corona is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City. It borders Flushing and Flushing Meadows–Corona Park to the east, Jackson Heights to the west, Forest Hills and Rego Park to the south, Elmhurst to the southwest, and East E ...
, determined to provide designs that improved the quality of contemporary glass. Tiffany's leadership and talent, as well as his father's money and connections, led this business to thrive.
In 1881 Tiffany did the interior design of the
Mark Twain House
The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) and his family from 1874 to 1891. It was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in the American High Gothic style.
Clemens bi ...
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
until it had been redecorated. He commissioned Tiffany, who had begun to make a name for himself in New York society for the firm's
interior design
Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. An interior designer is someone who plans, researches, coordi ...
work, to redo the state rooms, which Arthur found charmless. Tiffany worked on the East Room, the Blue Room, the Red Room, the State Dining Room, and the Entrance Hall, refurnishing, repainting in decorative patterns, installing newly designed mantelpieces, changing to wallpaper with dense patterns, and, of course, adding
Tiffany glass
Tiffany glass refers to the many and varied types of glass developed and produced from 1878 to 1933 at the Tiffany Studios in New York City, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a team of other designers, including Clara Driscoll, Agnes F. Northrop, an ...
to gaslight fixtures and windows and adding an opalescent floor-to-ceiling glass screen in the Entrance Hall. The Tiffany screen and other Victorian additions were all removed in the Roosevelt renovations of 1902, which restored the White House interiors to Federal style in keeping with its architecture.
A desire to concentrate on art in glass led to the breakup of the firm in 1885 when Tiffany chose to establish his own glassmaking firm that same year. The first Tiffany Glass Company was incorporated December 1, 1885, and in 1902 became known as the
Tiffany Studios
Tiffany may refer to:
People
* Tiffany (given name), list of people with this name
* Tiffany (surname), list of people with this surname
Known mononymously as "Tiffany":
* Tiffany Darwish, (born 1971), an American singer, songwriter, actress know ...
.
In the beginning of his career, Tiffany used cheap jelly jars and bottles because they had the mineral impurities that finer glass lacked. When he was unable to convince fine glassmakers to leave the impurities in, he began making his own glass. Tiffany used
opalescent
Opalescence refers to the optical phenomena displayed by the mineraloid gemstone opalopalescent. 2019. In Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. Retrieved January 7, 2019, from https://1828.mshaffer.com/d/word/opale ...
glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a unique style of stained glass. Tiffany acquired Stanford Bray's patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US349424A/en)for the "copper foil" technique, which, by edging each piece of cut glass in copper foil and soldering the whole together to create his windows and lamps, made possible a level of detail previously unknown. This can be contrasted with the method of painting in enamels or glass paint on colorless glass, and then setting the glass pieces in lead channels, that had been the dominant method of creating stained glass for hundreds of years in Europe.
The First Presbyterian Church building of 1905 in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
, is said to be unique in that it uses Tiffany windows that partially make use of painted glass. Use of the colored glass itself to create stained glass pictures was motivated by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and its leader
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
in England. Fellow artists and glassmakers Oliver Kimberly and Frank Duffner, founders of the
Duffner and Kimberly Duffner & Kimberly was a New York City company which produced leaded glass and bronze lamps around the same time as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Tiffany Studios. The Duffner & Kimberly Company was formed in December 1905, with a capital outlay of $350,000 ...
Company and
John La Farge
John La Farge (March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910) was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics.
La Farge is best known for ...
were Tiffany's chief competitors in this new American style of stained glass. Tiffany, Duffner and Kimberly, along with La Farge, had learned their craft at the same glasshouses in Brooklyn in the late 1870s.
In 1889 at the Paris Exposition, Tiffany was said to have been "overwhelmed" by the glass work of
Émile Gallé
Émile Gallé (8 May 1846 in Nancy – 23 September 1904 in Nancy) was a French artist and designer who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major innovators in the French Art Nouveau movement. He was noted for his designs of ...
Alphonse Mucha
Alfons Maria Mucha (; 24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator and graphic artist, living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, best known for his distinctly stylized and decorat ...
.
In 1893, Tiffany built a new factory called the Stourbridge Glass Company, later called Tiffany Glass Furnaces, which was located in
Corona, Queens
Corona is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City. It borders Flushing and Flushing Meadows–Corona Park to the east, Jackson Heights to the west, Forest Hills and Rego Park to the south, Elmhurst to the southwest, and East ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, hiring the Englishman Arthur J. Nash to oversee it. In 1893, his company also introduced the term ''
Favrile
Favrile glass is a type of iridescent art glass developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. He patented this process in 1894 and first produced the glass for manufacture in 1896 in Queens, New York. It differs from most iridescent glasses because the col ...
'' in conjunction with his first production of blown glass at his new glass factory. Some early examples of his lamps were exhibited in the
1893 World's Fair
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
. At the
Exposition Universelle (1900)
The Exposition Universelle of 1900, better known in English as the 1900 Paris Exposition, was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from 14 April to 12 November 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate developmen ...
in Paris, he won a gold medal with his stained glass windows ''The Four Seasons''
He trademarked ''
Favrile
Favrile glass is a type of iridescent art glass developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. He patented this process in 1894 and first produced the glass for manufacture in 1896 in Queens, New York. It differs from most iridescent glasses because the col ...
'' (from the old French word for handmade) on November 13, 1894. He later used this word to apply to all of his glass, enamel and pottery. Tiffany's first commercially produced lamps date from around 1895. Much of his company's production was in making stained glass windows and Tiffany lamps, but his company designed a complete range of interior decorations. At its peak, his factory employed more than 300 artisans. Recent scholarship led by
Rutgers
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was a ...
professor
Martin Eidelberg
Martin P. Eidelberg (born January 30, 1941) is an American professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University and an expert on ceramics and Tiffany glass. He is noted for discovering that many floral Tiffany lamp designs were not personall ...
suggests that a team of talented single women designers – sometimes referred to as the "Tiffany Girls" – led by Clara Driscoll played a big role in designing many of the floral patterns on the famous
Tiffany lamp
Tiffany may refer to:
People
* Tiffany (given name), list of people with this name
* Tiffany (surname), list of people with this surname
Known mononymously as "Tiffany":
* Tiffany Darwish, (born 1971), an American singer, songwriter, actress kno ...
as well as for other creations.
Tiffany interiors also made considerable use of
mosaic
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...
s. The mosaics workshop, largely staffed by women, was overseen until 1898 by the Swiss-born sculptor and designer
Jacob Adolphus Holzer
Jacob Adolphus Holzer (1858–1938) was a Swiss-born designer, muralist, mosaicist, interior designer, and sculptor who was associated with both John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens before he left to direct the mosaic workshops of Louis Com ...
.
In 1902, Tiffany became the first design director for Tiffany & Co., the jewelry company founded by his father.
1911 saw the installation of an enormous glass curtain fabricated for the
Palacio de Bellas Artes
The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) is a prominent cultural center in Mexico City. It has hosted notable events in music, dance, theatre, opera and literature in Mexico and has held important exhibitions of painting, sculpture and p ...
in
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
. It is considered by some to be a masterpiece.
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
Tiffany used all his skills in the design of his own house, the 84-room
Laurelton Hall
Laurelton Hall was the home of noted artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, located in Laurel Hollow, Long Island, New York. The 84-room mansion on 600 acres of land, designed in the Art Nouveau mode, combined Islamic motifs with connection to nature, w ...
, in the village of
Laurel Hollow
Laurel Hollow is a village in the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 1,952 at the 2010 census. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Laurel Hollow was the eight ...
, on
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, completed in 1905. Later this estate was donated to his foundation for art students along with 60 acres (243,000 m2) of land, sold in 1949, and destroyed by a fire in 1957.
Personal life
Louis married Mary Woodbridge Goddard (c1850-1884) on May 15, 1872, in
Norwich, Connecticut
Norwich ( ) (also called "The Rose of New England") is a city in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The Yantic, Shetucket, and Quinebaug Rivers flow into the city and form its harbor, from which the Thames River flows south to Long ...
and had the following children:
*Mary Woodbridge Tiffany (1873–1963) who married
Graham Lusk
Graham Lusk FRS(For) FRSE (February 15, 1866 - July 18, 1932) was an American physiologist, and nutritionist. He graduated from Columbia University, and from University of Munich with a PhD. He was an expert on diabetes. He was profoundly deaf ...
;
*Charles Louis Tiffany I (1874–1874);
*Charles Louis Tiffany II (1878–1947) who married Katrina Brandes Ely;
*Hilda Goddard Tiffany (1879–1908), the youngest.
After the death of his wife, he married Louise Wakeman Knox (1851–1904) on November 9, 1886. They had the following children:
*Louise Comfort Tiffany (1887–1974), who married Rodman Drake DeKay Gilder;
*Julia DeForest Tiffany (1887–1973), who married Gurdon S. Parker then married Francis Minot Weld;
*Annie Olivia Tiffany (1888–1892); and
* Dorothy Trimble Tiffany (1891–1979), who, as Dorothy Burlingham, later became a noted
psychoanalyst
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: + . is a set of Theory, theories and Therapy, therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a bo ...
and lifelong friend and partner of
Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
.
Tiffany died on January 17, 1933, and is buried in
Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery is a cemetery in the western portion of Brooklyn, New York City. The cemetery is located between South Slope/ Greenwood Heights, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, Kensington, and Sunset Park, and lies several bl ...
in
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
.
Tiffany is the great-grandfather of investor
George Gilder
George Franklin Gilder (; born November 29, 1939) is an American investor, author, economist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His 1981 book, '' Wealth and Poverty'', advanced a case for supply-side economics and capitalism during the e ...
.
Societies
*
American Watercolor Society
The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States.
Qualifications
AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...
*
Architectural League
The Architectural League of New York is a non-profit organization "for creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related disciplines".
The league dates from 1881, when Cass Gilbert organized meetings at the Salmagundi Club for ...
* Chevalier of the
Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...
in 1900
* Imperial Society of Fine Arts (Tokyo)
*
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
in 1880
* New York Society of Fine Arts
*
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (SNBA; ; en, National Society of Fine Arts) was the term under which two groups of French artists united, the first for some exhibitions in the early 1860s, the second since 1890 for annual exhibitions.
1862
Es ...
(Paris)
*
Society of American Artists
The Society of American Artists was an American artists group. It was formed in 1877 by artists who felt the National Academy of Design did not adequately meet their needs, and was too conservative.
The group began meeting in 1874 at the home of ...
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' (January 18, 1933)
Awards and honors
* 1893: 44 medals,
World Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
(Chicago)
* 1900: gold medal, Chevalier of the
Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...
(France)
* 1900: grand prix, Paris Exposition
* 1901: grand prix, St. Petersburg Exposition
* 1901: gold medal, Buffalo Exposition
* 1901: gold medal, Dresden Exposition
* 1902: gold medal and special diploma, Turin Exposition
* 1904: gold medal, Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis
* 1907: gold medal,
Jamestown Exposition
The Jamestown Exposition was one of the many world's fairs and expositions that were popular in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, it w ...
Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, a museum noted for its '' art nouveau'' collection, houses the most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany found anywhere, a major collection of American art pottery, and fi ...
in
Winter Park, Florida
Winter Park is a city in Orange County, Florida, United States. The population was 30,183 according to the 2022 census population estimate. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Winter Park was fo ...
houses the world's most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany, including
Tiffany jewelry
Tiffany jewelry was the jewelry created and supervised by Louis Comfort Tiffany at Tiffany & Co., during the Art Nouveau movement.
History
Louis Comfort Tiffany waited until after his father’s death (Charles Lewis Tiffany) in 1902 before begin ...
, pottery, paintings, art glass, leaded-glass windows, lamps, and the
Tiffany Chapel
The Tiffany Chapel is a chapel interior designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and created by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. First installed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the chapel was later moved to the Cathedral ...
he designed for the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordi ...
in Chicago. After the close of the exposition, a benefactor purchased the entire chapel for installation in the crypt of the
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine (sometimes referred to as St. John's and also nicknamed St. John the Unfinished) is the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. It is at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood ...
in New York City. As construction on the cathedral continued, the chapel fell into disuse, and in 1916, Tiffany removed the bulk of it to Laurelton Hall. After a 1957 fire, Hugh McKean (a former art student in 1930 at Laurelton Hall) and his wife Jeannette Genius McKean rescued the chapel, which now occupies an entire wing of the Morse Museum which they founded. Many glass panels from Laurelton Hall are also there; for many years some were on display in local restaurants and businesses in
Central Florida
Central Florida is a region of the U.S. state of Florida. Different sources give different definitions for the region, but as its name implies it is usually said to comprise the central part of the state, including the Tampa Bay area and the Gr ...
. Some were replaced by full-scale color transparencies after the museum opened.
A major exhibit at New York's
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
on Laurelton Hall opened in November 2006. An exhibit at the
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library in New York City, along Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum. ...
in 2007 featured new information about the women who worked for Tiffany and their contribution to designs credited to Tiffany; the Society holds and exhibits a major collection of Tiffany's work. In addition, since 1995 the
Queens Museum of Art
The Queens Museum, formerly the Queens Museum of Art, is an art museum and educational center located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States. The museum was founded in 1972, and has among its p ...
has featured a permanent collection of Tiffany objects, which continues Tiffany's presence in Corona, Queens where the company's studios were once located. Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church in
Richmond, Indiana
Richmond is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana. Bordering the state of Ohio, it is the county seat of Wayne County and is part of the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 36,812. Situa ...
has a collection of 62 Tiffany windows which are still their original placements, but the church is deteriorating and in jeopardy.
In 1906, Tiffany created stained glass windows for the
Stanford White
Stanford White (November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906) was an American architect. He was also a partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts firms. He designed many houses for the rich, in additio ...
Madison Avenue
Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stre ...
in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. The church was Tiffany's place of worship, and was torn down in 1919 after the
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), better known as MetLife, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, wi ...
bought the land to build their new
headquarters
Headquarters (commonly referred to as HQ) denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the to ...
. Tiffany had inserted a clause in his contract stipulating that if the church were ever to be demolished then ownership of the windows would revert to him.
Tiffany enjoyed staying at the Mission Inn in
Riverside, California
Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire an ...
, and had become friends with the founder of the Mission Inn,
Frank Augustus Miller
Frank Augustus Miller (June 30, 1858 – June 17, 1935) was the owner and chief developer of the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, United States, where Frank Augustus Miller Middle School was named after him. He was also a civic leader and ...
, so, after meeting with Miller in New York, Tiffany shipped the windows to the Mission Inn; they arrived there in 1924, and were stored until the inn's St. Francis Chapel was completed in 1931. There are six rectangular windows and a 104” diameter window in the rear of the chapel, as well as another 104” diameter window is in the Galeria next to the chapel. A smaller window entitled “Monk At The Organ” featuring a
Franciscan
The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...
friar, is in St Cecelia's Chapel, a wedding chapel, and is engraved with Tiffany's signature. The St Francis Chapel was designed with the intent of prominently displaying Tiffany's windows.
The
Arlington Street Church
The Arlington Street Church is a Unitarian Universalist church across from the Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. Because of its geographic prominence and the notable ministers who have served the congregation, the church is considered to b ...
in Boston has 16 Tiffany windows of a set of 20, designed by Frederick Wilson (1858–1932), Tiffany's chief designer for ecclesiastical windows. They were gradually installed between 1889 and 1929. The church archives include designs for 4 additional windows, which were never commissioned due to financial constraints caused by the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
. When funds again became available, Tiffany Studios had gone out of business and its stockpile of glass had been dispersed and lost, ending the prospect of completing the set. Also in the
Back Bay
Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, built on reclaimed land in the Charles River basin. Construction began in 1859, as the demand for luxury housing exceeded the availability in the city at the time, and t ...
district of Boston is
Frederick Ayer Mansion
The Frederick Ayer Mansion is a National Historic Landmark on 395 Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.
The mansion was the home of Frederick Ayer, owner of the American Woolen Company, and features well ...
, one of three surviving examples of Tiffany interiors, and the only surviving building also possessing exterior mosaics designed by Tiffany.
The Pine Street Baptist Church in
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
was opened in 1917 at Lloyd and Wayland Street as Central Baptist and in 2003, became known as Community Church of Providence. Between 1917 and 2018 the church featured a large Tiffany stained glass memorial to Frederick W. Hartwell that was created by Agnes F. Northrop and entitled "Light in Heaven and Earth". The complex work, considered "one of the largest and finest landscape windows ever produced by Tiffany Studios", largely was overlooked in the community. In 2018, the church sold the window to the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
. After conservation and preparation it will be displayed prominently as the
Hartwell Memorial Window Hartwell may refer to:
Places
* Hartwell, Victoria, a neighbourhood of Camberwell in Melbourne, Australia
** Hartwell railway station
England
* Hartwell, Buckinghamshire
* Hartwell, Northamptonshire, a village
* Hartwell, Staffordshire, a lo ...
.
Significant collections of Tiffany windows outside the United States are the 17 windows in the former Erskine and American United Church, now part of the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA; french: Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MBAM) is an art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest art museum in Canada by gallery space. The museum is located on the historic Golden Square ...
in
Montreal, Canada
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-pea ...
American Church in Paris
The American Church in Paris (formerly the American Chapel in Paris) was the first American church established outside the United States. It traces its roots back to 1814, and the present church building - located at 65 Quai d'Orsay in the 7th ...
, on the
Quai d'Orsay
The Quai d'Orsay ( , ) is a quay in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. It is part of the left bank of the Seine opposite the Place de la Concorde. The Quai becomes the Quai Anatole-France east of the Palais Bourbon, and the Quai Branly west of th ...
, which have been classified as National Monuments by the French government; these were commissioned by
Rodman Wanamaker
Lewis Rodman Wanamaker (February 13, 1863 – March 9, 1928) was an American businessman and heir to the Wanamaker's department store fortune. In addition to operating stores in Philadelphia, New York City, and Paris, he was a patron of the arts ...
in 1901 for the original American Church building on the right bank of the
Accrington
Accrington is a town in the Hyndburn borough of Lancashire, England. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, east of Preston, north of Manchester and is situated on the culverted River Hyndburn. Commonly abbreviated by locals to ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
"Haworth Art Gallery" on the Hyndburn Borough Council website contains a collection of more than 140 examples of the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, including vases, tiles, lamps, and mosaics. The collection, which claims to be the largest collection of publicly owned Tiffany glass outside of the United States, contains a fine example of an Aquamarine vase and the noted Sulphur Crested Cockatoos mosaic.
Gallery
File:Tiffany_Window_of_St_Augustine_-_Lightner_Museum.jpg, Window of St. Augustine, in the
Lightner Museum
The Lightner Museum is a museum of antiques, mostly American Gilded Age pieces, housed within the historic Hotel Alcazar building in downtown St. Augustine. This 1887 Spanish Renaissance Revival style building is listed on the National Register ...
, St. Augustine, Florida.
File:Girl with Cherry Blossoms - Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, c. 1890.JPG, ''Girl with Cherry Blossoms'' (c. 1890)
File:tifftree.JPG, ''The Tree of Life'' stained glass
File:WLA ima Angel of the Resurrection.jpg, '' Angel of the Resurrection'' (1904), in the
Indianapolis Museum of Art
The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...
File:The New Creation by Tiffany.jpg, ''The New Creation'', at
Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church
Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., is a large, Gothic Revival-style church built in 1870 and located at Park Avenue and Lafayette Avenue in the city's Bolton Hill neighborhood. Named in memory of a Bal ...
,
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
File:Baptism of Christ by Tiffany.jpg, ''The Baptism of Christ'', at Brown Memorial
File:LockportStainedGlass.jpg, ''Nicodemus Came to Him by Night'', First Presbyterian Church, Lockport, NY
File:John-the-baptist-by-tiffany.jpg,
John the Baptist
John the Baptist or , , or , ;Wetterau, Bruce. ''World history''. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1994. syc, ܝܘܿܚܲܢܵܢ ܡܲܥܡܕ݂ܵܢܵܐ, Yoḥanān Maʿmḏānā; he, יוחנן המטביל, Yohanān HaMatbil; la, Ioannes Bapti ...
at
Arlington Street Church
The Arlington Street Church is a Unitarian Universalist church across from the Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. Because of its geographic prominence and the notable ministers who have served the congregation, the church is considered to b ...
in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
File:Sermon-on-the-mount-tiffany.jpg,
Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount (anglicized from the Matthean Vulgate Latin section title: ) is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth found in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 5, 6, and 7). that emphasizes his moral teachings. It is ...
at
Arlington Street Church
The Arlington Street Church is a Unitarian Universalist church across from the Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. Because of its geographic prominence and the notable ministers who have served the congregation, the church is considered to b ...
in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
File:Tiffany Jesus Window in Pullman Memorial Universalist Church.jpg, ''Christ the Consoler'' at
Pullman Memorial Universalist Church
The Pullman Memorial Universalist Church of Albion (village), New York, Albion, New York was constructed in 1894 (dedicated 1895) as a memorial to the parents of inventor and industrialist George Mortimer Pullman. The structure, built of pink Me ...
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
File:VMFA Tiffany Lamps.jpg, Collection of Tiffany Lamps from the
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the su ...
Tiffany glass
Tiffany glass refers to the many and varied types of glass developed and produced from 1878 to 1933 at the Tiffany Studios in New York City, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a team of other designers, including Clara Driscoll, Agnes F. Northrop, an ...
*
The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate c ...
Notes
Sources
* Tiffany, Louis Comfort & de Kay, Charles. ''The Art Work of Louis C. Tiffany''. Doubleday, Page & Co, New York, 1916
Further reading
* Couldrey, Vivienne. ''The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany''. Bloomsbury Publications, London, 1989,
* Duncan, Alastair. ''Tiffany Windows''. Thames & Hudson, London, 1980,
*
* Koch, Robert H. ''Louis C. Tiffany – Rebel in Glass''. 3rd Ed., Crown Publishers Inc, New York, 1982, ASIN B 0007DRJK0
* Logan, Ernest Edwin. ''The Church That Was Twice Born: A History of the First Presbyterian Church Of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1773–1973''. Pickwick-Morcraft, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1973
* Rago, David. "Tiffany Pottery" in ''American Art Pottery''. Knickerbocker Press, New York, 1997
*
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum housed within the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile (New York City), Museum Mile. It is one of 19 museums that fall under the ...