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MEETING #1641
4:00 P.M.
November 30, 2000
L. C. T. American Icon and Iconoclast
by Stanley D. Korfmacher M.D.
Assembly Room, A. K. Smiley Public
Library
SUMMARY
Louis Comfort Tiffany was the primary exponent of Art Nouveau in America. This
brief biography includes his major achievements in Painting, design art glass, stained
glass windows, mosaics, metalwork, enamels and architecture.
BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR
Though not a graduate gemologist, Stanley D. Korfmacher
M.D. has studied gems and minerals well over twenty years. He has subscribed to Gems and
Gemology, the respected GIA publication, for twenty years.
He was born on December 7, 1931, in Grinell, Iowa. His
father was Edwin Korfmacher M.D., F.A.C.S. and his mother was a registered nurse.
He graduated from Carleton College in 1953 and from
Northwestern Medical School in 1957. Subsequent training included internship at Swedish
Hospital in Seattle, and the Lahey Clinic in Boston from 1958 to 1961. From 1961 to 1963
he served as a physician with the U.S. Public Health Service. He was Assistant Chief of
Medicine at San Francisco Marine Hospital.
As a specialist in internal medicine he practiced at
the Beaver Medical Clinic in Redlands, California, from 1963 to 1994.
Some know him as an antiquarian, classical clarinetist,
mineral collector, art collector (especially art glass and Art Nouveau), auto buff, and
owner of three dogs. He was a founding member and 1st clarinetist in the Fourth of July
Band for 16 years. He is the Chairman of the Redlands Cultural Arts Commission,
Past-President of the Spinet Music Club, and is on the Boards of the Redlands Symphony,
and the Redlands Conservancy.
For 14 years he has been one of the supervisors of the
Medical Museum of the San Bernardino County Medical Society and he heads that subcommittee
of the Historical Committee.
L. C. T. American Icon and Iconoclast
In the 1880’s a worldwide movement began which was
nothing less than a revolution in almost all areas of art and design, from jewelry to
architecture. Inspired by the simple beauty and curvaceous forms of Japanese,
Celtic, Viking and Islamic art and of plant and animal life (including the human female!),
artists produced dazzling new works of painting and illustration, sculpture, metalwork,
art glass, ceramics, pottery, textiles, furniture, and architecture. In revolt
against decades of classical revival sameness in painting and sculpture and Victorian
excess in architecture and design the new art forms swept across Europe. The
movement was called Art Nouveau in Belgium and France, Secession in Austria, Jugendstil
(youthful style) in Germany, Modernismo in Spain and Stile Liberty in Italy (after an
English designer, Arthur Liberty, and his firm making jewelry and household wares with
excellent designs in the new style).
Of all the designers who brought Art Nouveau to America,
Louis Comfort Tiffany was the earliest, and by far the most important in nearly all of the
visual arts and crafts. In architecture, Louis Sullivan, H.H. Richardson and Frank
Lloyd Wright were the prominent representatives of the new style, although Tiffany also
dabbled in architecture.
Louis Comfort Tiffany was born into a wealthy merchant
family in 1848. His father, Charles Lewis Tiffany, was the founder of the legendary
New York store selling beautiful and exotic wares from around the world. He had been
the manager of the family general store in Connecticut since age 15. At age 25 in 1837 he
moved to New York to start a business with a school friend, John Young. The modest
stationery and fancy goods store featured unusual and beautiful window displays by Charles
Tiffany and the business thrived. The partners traveled to Europe seeking out
supplies of Dresden porcelain, Bohemian glass, French clocks and diamonds.
Charles’ great love was jewelry. In 1848
revolutionary upheavals in Europe allowed Charles to buy diamonds from the fabulous
collection of the Hungarian Prince Esterhazy and at the French Government sales he bought
24 lots of diamonds including jewels of Marie Antoinette and Louis XV. Louis Comfort
Tiffany was born that same year, when Tiffany and Co. had become a jewelry shop for
millionaires.
Charles had married Harriet Young of Connecticut, his
partner’s sister. Louis was her third son; her first boy died at
age 3 and the second before he was a year old, so it is likely that Louis was doted
on. However, he is described as solitary, dreamy, willful, proud and
capricious. His two sisters and younger brother were no match for him and he proved
too disruptive for his strict mother to tolerate so he was sent to boarding school and
then to a military academy.
When the Civil War broke out. Charles Tiffany
transformed his elegant showrooms into a military depot. Tiffany and Co. supplied
and manufactured swords, rifles, boots, caps, medals insignia, and even ambulances. Charles Tiffany became a wealthy man.
Both before the war as a child, and after as a young man,
Louis was a regular visitor to the Tiffany workshops and was greatly influenced by the
artisans and their work. A master silversmith, Edward C. Moore was especially
important; he had worked for Tiffany and Co. since 1851. His artistic tastes were
not European but Islamic, Persian and Japanese. He influenced a generation of New
York artists and craftsmen. He collected objects d’ art and young Louis was
entranced by his splendid collection of Oriental and antique glass.
Louis left school in1866 and announced his intention to be
an artist. With his great wealth he could have been a playboy but became a serious
art student. He avoided formal classes but roamed Manhattan sketching and often
visited the studio of painter George Inness who took him on as his first and only
student. Tiffany’s output was prodigious and aroused both respect and envy, for
he was a fine painter. Within a year, in1867, the National Academy of Design in New
York exhibited his painting “Afternoon”.
The following year found him in Paris, studying with Leon
Bailly. He then toured Spain and North Africa with Samuel Colman, another young
American painter, and his work that year showed talent in architectural drawing.
Everywhere he went he sketched and observed. Islamic domes and arches, interiors,
lamps and intricate decorations would all show up in his later work.
Tiffany returned to New York and produced paintings such
as “Mosque and Market Place”, “Ruins of Tangiers”, “View of the
Nile” and “The Snake Charmer” which were highly regarded. He began to
paint in a technique closer to Impressionism and introduced that style to the American
Watercolor Society which had been founded by his friend, Samuel Colman. In 1875, at
age 27, he painted “Duane Street”, a city slum, anticipating the American Ashcan
School of 1908, the aim of which was “to found an American Art based on a realistic
portrayal of the contemporary scene”.
He exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 and
the 1878 Paris Exposition as well as the National Academy of Design. He helped found
the Society of American Artists of which he was treasurer and which included George Inness
and John LaFarge.
Tiffany had married Mary Goddard in 1872. Their
first child was born the following year but Mary lost her second baby and contracted
tuberculosis in 1874; her health remained permanently impaired.
In 1874 Tiffany experimented with photography. One
of his biographers, Gertrude Speenburgh, claims that he was the first to take
“instantaneous” pictures of birds and animals.
In 1875 he started experiments in glass and in 1878
established a glass-making house of his own. That same year he traveled to the Paris
Exposition with his old mentor, the silversmith Edward Moore, who won the gold
medal. They met Siegfried Bing who would later introduce Tiffany’s glass
works to Europe. At the same exposition, Louis’ father, Charles was created a
Chevalier de la Legion d’ Honneur.
Back in New York Louis and his Associated Artists were
commissioned to decorate a new theater. His work was so admired that it led to work
decorating a mansion and a Veteran’s Room and Library at a New York armory. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) commissioned him to decorate his house in Hartford,
Connecticut.
Meanwhile, Tiffany’s glassworks had burned down
twice, but he continued his experiments at the Heidt Glasshouse in Brooklyn and patented a
new colored window glass. In 1882 the Associated Artists were commissioned to
decorate the Vanderbilt home and the White House. Chester Arthur had refused to
move into the White House after the death of President Garfield claiming the place looked
like “a badly kept barracks”. Tiffany redecorated the Dining Room, East
Room, Red Parlor and Blue Parlor. His piece de resistance was a floor to ceiling
opalescent glass screen with interlaced eagles and flags. (When Theodore Roosevelt
moved in in 1902 he instructed the architect to demolish it!) He had finished the
redecoration, which also included large mosaics, and huge chandeliers, in an amazing seven
weeks. He was overextended, and broke off from Associated Artists. His next
important commission was for the new Lyceum Theater auditorium, the first to be completely
lighted by electricity. His work was well received, but the theater failed and
Tiffany was not paid. He was forced to sue and ended up owning the theater!
In 1883 Louis and Mary went to Florida in hopes of
improving her health but she died the following year after a ten-year battle with
tuberculosis. To divert his son from the loss of his wife and the theater disaster,
Charles Tiffany had him design and decorate a new mansion for the entire family at 72nd St. and Madison Avenue. Louis designed the most lavish penthouse suite for
himself. The main room featured a large curvilinear quadruple fireplace with a
single chimney resembling a large tree. This was the first example of American Art
Nouveau.
Louis remarried in 1886 giving a mother to his three small
children and a more settled life. Louise Knox was a maturing influence and Louis
turned to his father’s example to redirect his professional life. In the next
four years, Louise bore twin daughters and a third daughter who died as a young
child. Louise was the daughter of a well- known clergyman and this led to many
ecclesiastical commissions. Churches across the United States featured large Tiffany
stained glass windows depicting Biblical scenes or landscapes; the landscapes were a
breakthrough and controversial at the time. There were also memorials and
mausoleums, built entirely by Tiffany craftsmen.
In 1888 he designed the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St.
Augustine, Florida which received high praise from the public and led to many more orders.
In 1889 at the Paris Exposition he saw the remarkable
glasswork of Emile Galle of Nancy, which inspired his own creativity. He also
found that Siegfried Bing would be delighted to represent him in Europe. It was to
be a lucrative relationship for both men.
Much of the credit for the early growth of Art Nouveau
belongs to Siegfrid Bing, a German-born dealer in Paris who served as guru and merchant
for the artists of the new movement. He later set up his own workshop as well.
In 1890 the French government sent Bing to the United
States to survey American art and architecture. His host in New York was Tiffany who
took him around his Fourth Avenue studios and workshops. Bing reported that he saw
“a great art industry, a vast establishment combining under one roof an army of
artisans of all kinds united by a common current of ideas. It is perhaps by the
audacity of such organizations that America will prepare a glorious future for its
industrial arts”.
Bing also saw Tiffany’s work in the Havemeyer mansion
on Fifth Avenue with its lush stained glass and mosaics and famous hanging
staircase. Bing exclaimed “Nothing could achieve such a unified concept in an
interior”.
During this same visit, Bing and Tiffany planned an
amazing project. Bing suggested that he, Bing, commission French artists to submit
paintings to be rendered by Tiffany in stained glass. Ultimately designs were
purchased from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre Bovard and the windows created in
Tiffany’s New York workshop . They were exhibited to great controversy at the
Salon du Champs-de-Mars. Some critics dismissed them for the incongruity of mixing
the media of paint and glass, but others saw these works as a perfect statement of the Art
Nouveau ethic, blending fine art and applied art and naturalism in decorative form.
Bing displayed these windows and eight other Tiffany windows based on other artists, along
with Tiffany vases when he opened his new gallery, L’ Art Nouveau, at 22 Rue de
Provence in 1895. The gallery name quickly became the dominant and lasting name of
the movement.
The 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago was an
opportunity for Tiffany and many other Art Nouveau artists. He planned to show six
paintings, but Bing persuaded him to do something grander and Tiffany designed a
chapel. Multiple romanesque arches enclosed simple forms with lavish surface
ornament in a light room and a dark room. The former had a mother-of-pearl
chandelier and white marble altar and iridescent white tiles and mosaics; the latter
ranged from light to deep greens and blues with, for example, blue and green mosaic
peacocks set in black marble. Critics and the public praised the work. It was
purchased and donated to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City but
returned to Tiffany in 1916. He set it up in his home, Laurelton Hall, and declared
it a chapel of art, not worship.
Also in 1893, Tiffany acquired his own glass house, the
Corona Furnaces on Long Island. There he worked with Arthur Nash, an English glass
expert who had come to the Unit States the previous year. Tiffany employed him as
both chief designer and manager. Nash stayed with Tiffany for 15 years and brought
his sons into the business. The sons felt that Tiffany never gave their father his
due.
Tiffany produced lamps beginning in 1893. They were
kerosene at first but Tiffany quickly took advantage of the greatly increased design
possibilities of electricity, such as fully enclosed shades, and fixtures which could
direct light in any direction. Tiffany did not originate leaded glass shades but his
shades and bronze lamp bases were marvels of original design and fine workmanship. The
leads were always copper foiled. The bronze was often inlaid with glass or mother of
pearl. His designs were extensively copied both in America and abroad. Lamps
were made up to 36 inches in diameter and cost up to $750, equivalent to about $20,000
today. Most were designed by his employees, but Tiffany patented designs of his own
in 1914 and 1918.
In 1894, Tiffany registered “Favrile” as a
trademark, suggested by Arthur Nash. It was derived from the Old English work
fabrile, meaning “belonging to the craft”. Favrile art glass was
characterized by a silky look and feel and was often opaque or nearly so with bright
colors or metallic sheen or iridescence, alone or in combination. Some were simple
forms with one color, others elaborately decorated in Art Nouveau themes or abstract
organic shapes. Louis Tiffany is seen now as a precursor of Abstract Expressionism,
a specifically American art form which did not peak until the 1950’s.
Incidentally, Tiffany claimed that he checked every item of Favrile glass
personally. The pieces were marked L.C.T. and numbered. Some of the finest
pieces have a full signature. Many,many imperfect pieces must have been destroyed.
According to Koch, Tiffany did not state that he had
invented the means for producing iridescent glass but he did describe the method he used
in the patent claim filed in 1880: “The metallic luster is produced by forming
a film of a metal or its oxides, on or in the glass, either by exposing it to vapors or
gases or by direct application. It may also be produced by corroding the surface of
the glass.” Twenty-dollar gold pieces were put in a heated solution of nitric
acid and hydrochloric acid and a diluted solution was sprayed on the glass before it
cooled producing a satinlike texture. Gold chloride was often suspended in the glass
itself as well, giving a gold surface to meld with the spray.
Iridescent glass had been made a few years earlier in
Bohemia and Venice. Ludwig Lobmeyer exhibited the first to be produced commercially
at an exposition in Vienna in 1873.
Almost the entire first year’s output of
Tiffany’s Corona Furnaces was shipped to top museums in the United States and around
the world – Paris, Berlin and Tokyo. The Smithsonian purchased 38 items, and 56
were presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as the gift of Henry
Havemeyer.
In early 1896 Tiffany felt ready to launch his new product
on the market. He invited the press to his Fourth Avenue studios. The New
York Times called the glass “curious and entirely novel, both in color and
texture”. The Herald called the variety “almost bewildering” while the Commercial Advertiser described the display as “a fine art
museum in itself.”
But the first major public exhibition of Tiffany glass had
actually occurred a few months earlier, at the grand opening of S. Bing’s shop in
Paris, the Salon de l’ Art Nouveau, on December 26, 1895. Twenty pieces of
Tiffany blown glass joined the ten stained glass windows made after paintings by French
artists which Bing had commissioned. There was also glass by Galle, jewelry by Lalique,
furniture by van deVelde, paintings by Bonnard, Roussel and Toulouse-Lautrec (among
others) and prints and drawings by Beardsley and Whistler (among others). L.C.
Tiffany was to be known after this as the foremost American representative of Art Nouveau.
In addition to art glass and the famous lamps so well
known today, Tiffany Studios supplied drapes, textiles, rugs, carpets and furniture.
As the experiments with enamel and inlay were applied to everyday objects, magnificent
desk sets of bronze with enamel, glass or mother-of-pearl appeared, along with jewelry
boxes, tobacco jars, vases, lamp bases etc. Favrile glass came to be used for dinner
services, wine glasses, decanters, cologne bottles and other utilitarian pieces. Tiffany Studios was in mass production.
Meanwhile, Tiffany and Co. was world famous for their
jewelry. Louis designed many expensive pieces using his father’s store of
precious stones. His pieces were unsigned, marked Tiffany and Co. like all the
others, making verification difficult. He favored American gemstones, buying most of
the output of the Montana sapphire mines, using especially the fine, clear cornflower blue
stones from the Yogo Gulch mine, the finest small sapphires the world has ever
produced. He also used tourmaline from Maine and California. When kunzite, a
new gem material, was discovered in California it was identified by Tiffany’s
gemologist, George Frederick Kunz and named for him. Tiffany jewelry featured
semi-abstract designs from natural forms and showed the influence of enamel work from the
Orient, Byzantium and the Italian Renaissance. Faceted gemstones were combined with
glowing enamel, opals, shell, coral or amber; opaque stones such as lapis, onyx and
malachite were also used.
Even more of Tiffany’s income came from stained glass
windows. Church windows, memorials and mausoleums were produced on such a large
scale that Tiffany finally purchased his own granite quarry in Massachusetts.
Jewel-medallion windows were chosen by Stanford White for his Madison Square Presbyterian
Church. These windows were later installed in the Mission Inn in Riverside,
California.
Tiffany had also done the Williams window for Yale’s
chapel in 1888, the Chittenden window for Yale’s library in 1890, and was the
decorator for Yale’s Bicentennial. He received an honorary Master of Arts
degree from Yale in 1903.
Charles Tiffany had died at age 90 in 1902. Louis
was vice president and art director of the company. He moved his studios to Madison
Avenue and 45th Street and purchased 580 acres at Oyster Bay on Long Island,
with an old resort hotel called Laurelton Hall. He closed the hotel to the public
and tore it down as his new mansion neared completion in 1904. The new Laurelton
Hall became the object of his creativity and virtuosity in architecture, interior design,
glasswork and painting.
The architecture was imaginative; a dream brought to life. Tiffany had no formal architectural training so he built a clay model to illustrate
his plan. The house was asymmetrical and on various elevations, and has been called
the largest and most important achievement of Art Nouveau in America. The house was
quite angular and had long horizontal rows of windows and balconies anticipating modernism
and Frank Lloyd Wright. There were 84 rooms and 25 bathrooms. Tiffany
engineered an elaborate waterscape with seven interior and exterior fountains and several
ponds and pools with exotic plants. They were connected by constantly flowing
streams of recirculated water. It opened in 1905. The final cost in 1908 was
$500,000. It was the site of lavish parties over the next ten years.
Louise Tiffany died in 1904. His oldest daughter
from his first marriage, had married and left, but his second daughter Hilda and the 17
year old twins, Julia and Louise Comfort, (known as Comfort), and 13 year old Dorothy were
still with their father. His son Charles was at Yale University and was being
groomed for a position with Tiffany and Co. Tiffany was strict with his daughters
and unkind to their suitors, but all married between 1910 and 1914, except Hilda who died
of tuberculosis in 1909.
Louis squabbled with his neighbors over electricity and
beach rights and was suspected of affairs with other men’s wives. Theodore
Roosevelt was a neighbor, and perhaps he expressed his feelings when he smashed the White
House screen!
Among his major commissions in the following years was a
mosaic drop curtain, a fire curtain, for the National Theater in Mexico City in 1909. This mammoth project required 20 workmen to fit nearly a million pieces of glass
over a period of 15 months. It reproduced the view from the presidential palace of
the Valley of Mexico, with a lake and trees and snowcapped mountains. First exhibited in
new York City in April 1911, then shipped to Mexico City, it was an accomplishment in
engineering as well as art: despite a weight of 27 tons, hydraulic pressure and
counterbalances allowed it to be raised or lowered in only seven seconds.
In 1915 a huge wall mosaic entitled Dream Garden was made
for the Curtis Publishing Co. in Philadelphia based on a Maxfield Parrish painting done in
collaboration with Tiffany. It is still there, 15 feet tall and 49 feet long. It too required nearly one million pieces of glass of many colors and degrees of
reflectivity, giving a three-dimensional effect.
The modernist Armory Show in New York in 1913 and the
great changes in perspective wrought by World War I signaled the death of both
Edwardian opulence and Art Nouveau. Tiffany turned 70 in 1918 and was being ignored
by the art world. He decided to make Laurelton Hall an art school and formed the
Louis C. Tiffany Foundation with a $1.5 million endowment. The Tiffany Studios
building at Madison Avenue and 45th Street was sold the same year, 1918.
The first young artists and craftsmen, who had to be American and aged 25 to 35 with
proven ability, arrived in 1920. They were housed in buildings separate from the
great house, but had access to it. The only formal requirement was that they should
mount an exhibition each week, when Tiffany would arrive to view their work.
Tiffany Studios began a slow decline culminating in
bankruptcy in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression. Tiffany and Company, the jewelry
business, survived.
Tiffany retreated into a private world and was seen as
eccentric. His constant companion was Sarah Hanley, a young Irish woman he met when
she came to nurse him through an illness in his 60’s. She lived and traveled with him
until his death in 1939, calling him “Padre” and always wearing yellow,
his favorite color. Under his tutelage, the nurse became a painter of some
repute. Louis built her a separate house on the estate and she lived there until her
death in 1958. Laurelton Hall itself had been sold by the foundation in 1946 and it
burned to the ground in 1957. What little was salvaged can be seen today, thanks to
the late Jeanette McKeen, in the Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Haven, Florida,
including the newly restored chapel. This museum has one of the largest collections
of Tiffany objects in the world.
Art Nouveau languished for decades. Many Tiffany
windows and mosaics were destroyed, lamps put into attics, small ornate objects
unappreciated. Only the simple Favrile glass maintained some value. In the
1970’s Art Nouveau began an upward spiral of appreciation, possibly due in part to a
reaction against the sterile, undecorated forms of modern architecture and minimalist art
showing neither pleasing form nor fine craftsmanship. Prices of fine Art Nouveau
jewelry, glass, bronzes, pottery, metalwork, and furniture have increased tenfold and more
in recent years. In July 1998 a large Tiffany exhibition was mounted by the
Metopolitan Museum of Art in New York, 130 items representing a great variety of his
work. In April 2000 the largest exhibition of Art Nouveau ever mounted opened at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London and drew a record 250,000 persons over its four
months on view. On October 8, 2000 the exhibition expanded even more to 350 pieces,
opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and was attended by 21,000 the
first week. A reduced show goes to Tokyo in April, 2001.
It is evident that the legacy of Art Nouveau and the
legacy of Louis Comfort Tiffany are far from dead.
Appendix I
The Story of the Dream Garden Mosaic after Maxfield Parrish
The large glass mosaic mural commissioned for the Curtis Publishing Co. has a
fascinating history. In 1911 Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies Home Journal, had
engaged Edwin A. Abbey, Howard Pyle, and Boutet de Monvel successively to make a design
for the mural, but each had died before producing a sketch. He then organized a
competition of six leading muralists but eventually rejected all of their efforts. In his
book, The Americanization of Edward Bok, he related the resolution, quaintly
referring to himself in the third person:
"Bok was still exactly where he started, while the building was nearly complete
and no mural. He now recalled a marvelous stage-curtain of glass mosaic executed by Louis
Comfort Tiffany of New York for the Municipal Theater at Mexico City---
"He sought Mr. Tiffany, who was enthusiastic over the idea of making an example of
his mosaic glass of such dimensions which should remain in this country, and gladly
offered to cooperate. But try as he might, Bok could not secure an adequate sketch for Mr.
Tiffany to carry out. Then he recalled that one day while at Maxfield Parish’s summer
home in New Hampshire the artist had told him of a dream garden which he would like to
construct, not on canvas but in reality. Bok suggested to Parrish that he come to New
York. He asked him to put his dream garden on canvas. The artist thought he could; in fact
was greatly attracted by the idea; but he knew nothing about mosaic work and was not
particularly attracted by the idea of having his work rendered in that medium.
"Bok took Parrish to Mr. Tiffany’s studio; the two artists talked together,
the glass-worker showed the canvas-painter his work, with the result that the two became
enthusiastic to cooperate in trying the experiment. Parrish agreed to make a sketch for
Mr. Tiffany’s approval, and within six months, after a number of conferences and an
equal number of sketches, they were ready to begin work. Bok only hoped both artists would
outlive their commission!
"It was a huge picture to be done in glass mosaic (15 feet in height and 49 feet
in length). The space to be filled called for over a million pieces of glass and for a
year the services of thirty of the most skilled artisans would be required. The work had
to be done from a series of bromide photographs enlarged to a size hitherto unattempted.
But at last the decoration was completed; the finished art piece was placed on exhibition
in New York and over seven thousand persons came to see it. The leading art critics
pronounced the result to be the most amazing instance of the tone capacity of glass-work
ever achieved. It was a veritable wonderpiece, far exceeding the utmost expression of
paint on canvas."
Tiffany himself commented on the "Dream Garden" in a brochure published by
the Curtis Publishing Company. "I have been studying the effects of different glasses
to accomplish perspective, and effects of color of different textures, of opaque and
transparent, of lustrous and nonlustrous, of absorbing and reflecting glasses.
"In translating this painting so that its poetical and luminous idealism should
find its way even to the comparatively uneducated eye, the medium used is of supreme
importance, and it seemed impossible to secure the effect desired on canvas and with
paint. In glass, however, selecting the lustrous, the transparent, the opaque and the
opalescent, and each with its own texture, a result is secured which does illustrate the
mystery, and it tells the story, giving play to imagination, which is the message it seeks
to convey.
"As a matter of fact, it is practically a new art. Never before has it been
possible to give the perspective in mosaics as it is shown in this picture, and the most
remarkable and beautiful effect is secured when different lights play upon this mosaic.
"It will be found that the mountains recede, the trees and foliage stand out
distinctly, and, as the light changes, the purple shadows will creep slowly from the base
of the mountain to its top; that the canyons and the waterfalls, the thickets and the
flowers, all tell their story and interpret Mr. Parrish’s dream."
Quoted from Robert Koch; Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass
Bibliography
1. Bose, Sudip;
Preservation Magazine, March/April 1999, page 26
2. Koch, Robert;
Louis Comfort
Tiffany, Rebel in Glass, Crown Publishing, New York, 1982
3. Koch, Robert;
Louis Comfort Tiffany,
Glass-Bronzes-Lamps, Crown Publishing, New York, 1971
4. Loring, John;
Tiffany’s 150
Years, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1987
5. McKean, Hugh;
The Lost Treasures of Louis Comfort
Tiffany, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1980
6. Meister, Stanley;
Smithsonian Magazine,
Volume 31, Number 7, October, 2000, Cover and pp74-875.,
7. Paul, Tessa;
The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Exeter Books, New York, 1987
8. Zapata, Janet;
The Jewelry and Enamels
of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1993
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