Louis Comfort Tiffany 1848 - 1933

Tiffany’s travels not only influenced his career but also acquainted him with the designs of medieval and Roman glass. Glass would offer a new field of challenge for Tiffany and would lead him to his next endeavor in design and decorative arts as an interior designer. His commissions for Mark Twain, Cornelius Vanderbilt and the White House under President Arthur earned him an international reputation and great success. Stained-glass windows were a feature in these interiors.

Tiffany became an enthusiastic supporter of the European Art Nouveau movement, challenging the current Victorian ornate style. Art Nouveau used free-flowing designs based on nature that exemplified the characteristics prevalent in Tiffany’s earlier creations as a landscape painter. The use of light, color and nature assumed greater significance in Tiffany’s work as he developed his unique approach to Art Nouveau.

In an effort to reach the interiors of a greater population, Tiffany began to design lamps to allow more people to enjoy art and beauty in their own home. Colored glass, Tiffany’s lasting love and challenge, found fresh scope and inspiration. While the windows served to transmit the light of day, the lamps represent a new source of illumination independent of daylight. Fabrication of the lamps began in 1885, with the majority of them being made between 1895 and 1920. It was not until 1899 that Tiffany publicly introduced the lamps for sale.

Tiffany is best known for his designs of glass vessels, lamps and windows, but he also created items in various other media including metalwork, furniture, jewelry and ceramics. His remarkable career spanned over five decades, including his tenure with L.C. Tiffany & Associated Artists, the Tiffany Glass Company, Tiffany Studios, Tiffany Furnaces and the L.C. Tiffany Furnaces.

By Tiffany’s death in 1933, the popularity of his elaborate lamps declined with the rise of Art Moderne and Expressionism. For two decades the designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany were forgotten. It was not until the first Tiffany retrospective show in 1958 that his objects were rediscovered by museums and collectors. Awareness of Tiffany’s craftsmanship escalated with an Art Nouveau show in 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art. Today the designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany are honored and treasured around the world, confirming Tiffany’s legacy as a visionary of Art Nouveau design.

born Feb. 18, 1848, New York, N.Y., U.S. died Jan. 17, 1933, New York, N.Y.

American painter, craftsman, philanthropist, decorator, and designer, internationally recognized as one of the greatest forces of the Art Nouveau style, who made significant contributions to the art of glassmaking.

The son of the famous jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany, Louis studied under the American painters George Inness and Samuel Colman and also trained as a painter of narrative subjects in Paris. That he was also influenced by a visit to Morocco is evident in some of his major works. Returning to the United States, he became a recognized painter and an associate of the National Academy of Design, New York City; later he reacted against the Academy's conservatism by organizing, in 1877, with such artists as John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the Society of American Artists.

Tiffany's experiments with stained glass, begun in 1875, led to the establishment, three years later, of his own glassmaking factory at Corona in Queens, New York City. By the 1890s he was a leading glass producer, experimenting with unique means of colouring. He became internationally famous for the glass that he named “Favrile,” a neologism from the Latin faber (“craftsman”). Favrile glass, iridescent and freely shaped, was sometimes combined with bronzelike alloys and other metals; such examples, some signed “L.C. Tiffany” or “L.C.T.,” enjoyed widespread popularity from 1890 to 1915 and were revived again in the 1960s. His Favrile glass was admired abroad, especially in central Europe, where it created a new fashion.

Having established a decorating firm known as Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, which served wealthy New Yorkers, Tiffany was commissioned by President Chester A. Arthur to redecorate the reception rooms at the White House, Washington, D.C., for which he created the great stained-glass screen in the entrance hall. He designed the chapel for the World's Columbian Exposition (1893) in Chicago and the high altar in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City.

Overwhelmed by the glass display of the brilliant French Art Nouveau designer Émile Gallé at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, Tiffany became interested in blown glass. From 1896 to 1900 he produced a vast amount of exquisite Favrile glass, many pieces achieving mysterious and impressionistic effects; his innovations made him a leader of the Art Nouveau movement.

Tiffany's firm was reorganized as Tiffany Studios in 1900, after which he ventured into lamps, jewelry, pottery, and bibelots. In 1911 he created one of his major achievements—a gargantuan glass curtain for the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. Like his father, Louis was a chevalier of the Legion of Honour; he also became an honorary member of the National Society of Fine Arts (Paris) and of the Imperial Society of Fine Arts (Tokyo). In 1919 he established the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation for Art Students at his luxurious and celebrated Long Island estate (which he had designed in total), which in 1946 was sold to provide scholarship funds.