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| Louis Comfort Tiffany |
 |
| Born |
February 18, 1848(1848-02-18)
New York, New York |
| Died |
January 17, 1933 (aged 84)
New York, New York |
| Resting place |
Greenwood Cemetery |
| Education |
Pennsylvania Military Academy
Eagleswood Military Academy |
| Known for |
Favrile glass |
| Spouse(s) |
Mary Woodbridge Goddard (c1850-1884) |
| Parents |
Charles Lewis Tiffany
Harriet Olivia Avery Young |
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 Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. Tiffany was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels and metalwork.[1]
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Contents
- 1 Personal life
- 2 Career
- 3 Death
- 4 Societies
- 5 Examples of Tiffany's work
- 6 See also
- 7 References
- 8 Writings
- 9 Further reading
- 10 External links
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Personal life
Tiffany was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company; and Harriet Olivia Avery Young. Louis married Mary Woodbridge Goddard (c1850-1884) on May 15, 1872 in Norwich, Connecticut and had the following children: Mary Woodbridge Tiffany (1873-1963) who married Graham Lusk; Charles Louis Tiffany I (1874-1874); Charles Louis Tiffany II (1878-1947); and 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); Julia DeForest Tiffany (1887-1973) who married Gurdon S. Parker then married Francis Minot Weld;[2] Annie Olivia Tiffany (1888-1892); and Dorothy Trimble Tiffany (1891-1979), who, as Dorothy Burlingham, later became a noted psychoanalyst and lifelong friend and partner of Anna Freud. Many of Tiffany's descendants are active in the arts, politics, and the sciences. Only one descendant is working in glass today — Dr. Rodman Gilder Miller of Seattle, Washington.[citation needed]
He attended school at Pennsylvania Military Academy[3] in Chester, Pennsylvania, and Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His first artistic training was as a painter, studying under George Inness and Samuel Colman in New York City and Léon Bailly in Paris.
Career
Tiffany's painting depicting a market outside of the walls of Tangier.
Louis Comfort Tiffany started out as a painter. He became interested in glassmaking from about 1875 and worked at several glasshouses in Brooklyn between then and 1878. In 1879, he joined with Candace Wheeler, Samuel Colman and Lockwood de Forest to form Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated American Artists. Tiffany's leadership and talent, as well as by his father's money and connections, led this business to thrive.Their most notable design in 1881 was the opalescent floor to ceiling glass screen commissioned for the White House by President Chester A. Arthur. The interior design of the Mark Twain House in Hartford CT. was also done in 1881 and still remains.
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 later that same year. The first Tiffany Glass Company was incorporated on December 1, 1885, which in 1902 became known as the Tiffany Studios.
The Holy City (1905) – St. John's vision on the isle of Patmos. Having 58 panels, this window is said to be one of the largest made by the Tiffany Studios. It is located at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church (Baltimore, Maryland), which has eleven Tiffany windows.
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 glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a unique style of stained glass. This can be contrasted with the method of painting in glass paint or enamels on colorless glass that had been the dominant method of creating stained glass for several hundred years in Europe. (The First Presbyterian Church building of 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is 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 in England. Fellow artist and glassmakers Oliver Kimberly and Frank Duffner, founders of the Duffner and Kimberly company, and John La Farge 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 1893, Tiffany built a new factory called the Stourbridge Glass Company, later called Tiffany Glass Furnaces, which was located in Corona, Queens, New York. In 1893, his company also introduced the term, Favrile 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 in Chicago.At the Exposition Universelle (1900),Paris 1900,he won a gold medal with his stained glass windows The Four Seasons
He trademarked Favrile (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 professor Martin Eidelberg suggests that a team of talented single women designers led by Clara Driscoll played a big role in designing many of the floral patterns on the famous Tiffany lamp as well as for other creations.[4][5][6][7][8]
Tiffany interiors also made considerable use of mosaics. The mosaics workshop, largely staffed by women, was overseen until 1898 by the Swiss-born sculptor and designer Jacob Adolphus Holzer.
Tiffany used all his skills in the design of his own house, the 84-room Laurelton Hall, in the village of Laurel Hollow, on Long Island, New York 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 was destroyed by a fire in 1957.
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida houses the world's most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany ([9] in Europe it is in Accrington,England) including Tiffany jewelry, pottery, paintings, art glass, leaded-glass windows, lamps, and the chapel interior he designed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the close of the exposition, a generous benefactor purchased the entire chapel for installation in the crypt of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York 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 the 1957 fire, the chapel was rescued by Hugh McKean,[10] a former art student in 1930 at Laurelton Hall, and his wife Jeannette Genius McKean,[11] and 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. Some were replaced by full-scale color transparencies after the museum opened. A major exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Laurelton Hall opened in November 2006. A new exhibit at the New-York Historical Society through 28 May 2007 features new information about the women who worked for Tiffany and their contribution to designs credited to Tiffany.[12] In addition, since 1995 the Queens Museum of Art has featured a permanent collection of Tiffany objects, which continues Tiffany’s presence in Corona, Queens where the company's studios were once located.
The only Tiffany windows outside of the USA are situated at the American Church in Paris on the Quai d'Orsay. They are classified as National Monuments by the French government and were commissioned by Rodman Wanamaker in 1901 for the original American Church building on the right bank of the Seine.
Death
Louis Comfort Tiffany died on January 17, 1933, and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.[13]
Societies
- American Water Color Society
- Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1900
- National Academy of Design in 1880
- Societé des Beaux Arts
- Society of American Artists in 1877
Examples of Tiffany's work
Stained glass windows
Window of St. Augustine, in the Lightner Museum, St. Augustine, Florida.
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The Dream Garden by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Maxfield Parrish
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Girl with Cherry Blossoms (c. 1890)
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The Tree of Life stained glass
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The New Creation, at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, Maryland
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The Baptism of Christ, at Brown Memorial
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The Annunciation to the Shepherds, at Brown Memorial
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Nicodemus Came to Him by Night, First Presbyterian Church, Lockport, NY
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John the Baptist at Arlington Street Church in Boston
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Sermon on the Mount at Arlington Street Church in Boston
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Education, 1890, Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Yale University
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| Lamps |
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Tiffany Studios Dragonfly table lamp circa 1902
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Laburnum, modern replica
- (mostly light/dark yellows, with green and some blue glass, plus a few red panes)
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Dragonfly, modern replica
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Lotus leaf, modern replica
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See also
- Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, Maryland
- Education (Chittenden Memorial Window)
- Louis C. Tiffany Garden Museum Mae Station
- Second Presbyterian Church of Chicago, Illinois
- The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
- Trinity Episcopal Church, Buffalo, NY
References
- ^ William Warmus. The Essential Louis Comfort Tiffany. New York: Abrams, 2001. Pages 5-8.
- ^ "Mrs. Parker Weds Francis M. Weld; Daughter of Louis Comfort Tiffany Married at Her Sister's Home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Bridegroom, Bond Broker. He was a Captain of Artillery in World War. Bride Is Former Wife of Gurdon S. Parker.". The New York Times. 1930-08-18. "Mrs. Julia Tiffany Parker, daughter of Louis Comfort Tiffany of this city and Miami, Florida, was married to Francis Minot Weld of 720 Park Avenue yesterday afternoon at the home of the bride's sister, Mrs. Rodman Gilder, Oyster Bay, Long Island."
- ^ "Widener University: Distinguished Alumni". Widener University. http://widener.edu/pmcmuseum/distinguishedalumni.asp. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
- ^ KATE TAYLOR (February 13, 2007). "Tiffany's Secret Is Over". New York Sun. http://www.nysun.com/arts/tiffanys-secret-is-over/48495/. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "The exhibition was made possible by the discovery of Driscoll's letters by two of the show's curators, an emeritus professor of art history at Rutgers University, Martin Eidelberg, and a former associate curator of decorative arts at the N-YHS..."
- ^ Caitlin A. Johnson (April 15, 2007). "Tiffany Glass Never Goes Out Of Style". CBS News.com. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/15/sunday/main2685085.shtml. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "Experts ... and Martin Eidelberg are friendly rivals in Tiffany scholarship who independently discovered hundreds of the long, detailed letters Driscoll wrote to her family. "I just blurted it out and said, 'You won't believe what I found — letters from Clara Driscoll,' and she replied, in this kind of deadpan voice, 'I already know them," Eidelberg said."
- ^ Jeffrey Kastner (February 25, 2007). "Out of Tiffany’s Shadow, a Woman of Light". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/arts/design/25kast.html?pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "He was co-curator of the exhibition with the independent scholar ... and the historical society’s curator of decorative arts, Margaret K. Hofer."
- ^ Vivian Goodman (January 14, 2007). "Exhibition Honors Woman Behind the Tiffany Lamp". National Public Radio (NPR). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6854160. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "But arts and crafts were second nature to Driscoll, the country girl who was 20 years Tiffany's junior..."
- ^ Staff writer (April 7, 2006). "Spare Times". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E1D61030F934A35757C0A9609C8B63. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "'THE GENIUS OF LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY,' Green-Wood Cemetery, Fifth Avenue and 25th Street, Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn. A lecture ... a curator of the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass at the Queens Museum of Art, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park."
- ^ Haworth Art Gallery [1] the largest public collection of Tiffany glass in Europe. Haworth art Gallery ,Accrington England,
- ^ Hugh McKean
- ^ Jeannette Genius McKean
- ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070223/ap_en_ot/art_tiffany_girls
- ^ "Louis C. Tiffany, Noted Artist, Dies. Philanthropist, Craftsman And Son Of Founder Of Jewelry Firm Pneumonia Victim. Devised Glass Formulae. Decorative Work In Medium Was Widely Known. Devoted Oyster Bay Estate To Students.". New York Times. 1933-01-18. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0817F8355F1A7A93CAA8178AD85F478385F9. Retrieved 2008-04-14.
Writings
- The Art work of Louis C Tiffany (biographly as dictated to Charles de Kay)Doubleday, Page & Co New York 1916
Further reading
- Vivienne Couldrey, The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany,Bloomsbury Publications.London 1989 ISBN 0-7475-0488-1
- Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Windows,Thame & Hudson ,Lodon, 1980 ISBN 978-0-50023-321-4
- Robert H Koch, Louis C Tiffany-Rebel in Glass , Crown Publishers Inc New York,3rd Ed 1982 ASIN B 0007DRJK0
- Ernest Edwin Logan (1973). The Church That Was Twice Born-A History of the First Presbyterian Church Of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1773-1973. Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick-Morcraft.
External links
- [2] One of Tiffany's The Four Seasons Paris Exposition 1900 Gold Medal winning Windows- Winter
- The Corning Museum of Glass Information on 2009-2010 Tiffany Treasures exhibition
- Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Winter Park, Florida
- Eight windows in the Euclid Avenue Temple in Cleveland
- Louis Comfort Tiffany - Artist and Businessman
- Louis Comfort Tiffany at Find a Grave
- Louis C. Tiffany Garden Museum (Japanese)
- Louis Comfort Tiffany Pictorial Histories
- Press Release on Metropolitan 2006-07 exhibition about Laurelton Hall
- Tiffany and The Associated Artists' work on the Mark Twain House
- When Louis Tiffany Redesigned the White House
- Tiffany Lamps - Information, Valuation and History.
- Willard Memorial Chapel
- Virtual visit of Tiffany Glass exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2010)
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Media related to Louis Comfort Tiffany at Wikimedia Commons
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"Tiffany, Louis Comfort". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
Categories: 1848 births | 1933 deaths | American interior designers | Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery | Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur | American jewelry designers | People from New York City | National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees | Stained glass artists and manufacturers of the United States | Widener University alumni
Hidden categories: Articles with hCards | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from October 2008
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