Tiffany glass: a study in color, light, innovation that revolutionized glassmaking

Tiffany son created jewels from glass

PARIS — The name Tiffany is synonymous with the finest of jewelry and a visit to an exhibition at the Luxembourg Museum devoted to Louis Comfort Tiffany is like standing inside a jewel box — without a jewel in sight.

The son of the founder of New York-based Tiffany & Co. preferred glass. His creations, from vases to stained glass windows or the signature Tiffany lamps, are a study in color, light and innovation that revolutionized glassmaking, breaking the mold set by European artisans and creating what became known as American glass.

“He liked the imperfections of glass, the irregular shapes you can get from glass, the unexpected effects,” curator Rosalind Pepall said.

“Glass goes into the oven and then it flows, the colors all melt together. So you never know what’s going to come out and he just loved that,” said Pepall, decorative arts curator at Montreal’s Musee des Beaux Arts, the force behind the Paris exhibition.

The jewelry of his father, Charles Lewis Tiffany, who founded Tiffany & Co. in 1837, served as an inspiration, but not the only one. Tiffany, who traveled widely in Europe, North Africa and elsewhere, was also inspired by Orientalists, Islamic and Japanese art and the flowers in his garden.

A selection of pieces from the late 19th and early 20th centuries featured in the show “Louis Comfort Tiffany, Colors and Light,” which opens Wednesday, range from monumental-sized stain glass windows to tiny stamp boxes bejeweled in glass. It is the first display of Tiffany’s works in France’s capital since the 1900 World’s Fair.

Rich, luminescent colors glow and dazzle like electric rainbows while fine, sometimes startling, often lyric designs — best seen in the vases which gained Tiffany international acclaim — evoke a sense of harmony.

Tiffany began his artistic training as a painter, studying in New York and Paris before taking up interior design where his reputation drew him clients like Mark Twain and in 1882 the White House of President Chester A. Arthur.

But it was his innovative work in glass that became his mainstay and has sustained his artistic reputation.

Tiffany believed that the decorative arts could stand up with sculpture and painting.

Through revolutionary techniques such as draping, in which semi-cooled glass was lifted and folded like draperies, he added a three-dimensional quality to his work and provided a glassmaker’s version of shading.

Nurtured on exquisite gems, Tiffany created his own jewels in multiple ways, using chipped glass, for instance, to allow light to glance off its facets.

European glassmakers, meanwhile, were painting their works.

“He was really playing with glass rather than painting on glass” like the English, Germans or French, Pepall said.

The window “Magnolias” (1900) showing a single magnolia branch, lent by the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and first shown at the 1900 World’s Fair, appears to embody Tiffany’s artistic soul, incorporating his love of nature. The blossoms with their three-dimensional petals and their confetti-spattered centers come alive.

Iridescent peacock feathers show up in numerous lamps, along with the classic Tiffany style.

While the lamps were no more masterful than Tiffany’s other works, they gained favor among buyers.

“They really attracted a Hollywood set for a while … that could have added to the cachet,” said Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, a guest curator and decorative arts expert from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, which lent numerous pieces for the exhibition.

The Depression, when somber colors and spare designs were favored, were a blow to the Tiffany atelier where he was the maestro of a team of artists, often women, who designed the works.

Tiffany died in 1933 at age 84, and his firm was liquidated five years later, but curator Pepall says it was his art, not the Tiffany name, that helped him live on.

“Tiffany the father was very well known but then Tiffany Louis, the son, ended up making the name even more famous …. His name became a mark of prestige.”

The Paris exhibition runs until Jan. 17, then moves to Montreal’s Musee des Beaux-Arts, (Feb. 11-May 2, 2010), then to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (May 29-Aug. 15, 2010).