A Look at Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Innovations
The decorative arts of Louis Comfort Tiffany—and his output through Tiffany Studios—are world-renowned for art-forms as distinct as benches and monumental windows.
The quality of the firm’s work was recognized internationally as the gold standard, so much so that by the turn of the 20th century, its innovations came to be referred to as “Tiffany glass.” But what exactly is Tiffany glass, and how was it produced?
As the technique for creating stained glass had gone largely unchanged since the medieval era, Tiffany’s process for glass production, using copper foil and leaded techniques, was cutting-edge for its time. In 1894, Tiffany patented the production process of Favrile glass, in which metallic oxides integrated into the glass itself to create an iridescent appearance.
Though Tiffany Studios often used Favrile glass techniques for works like windows and lamps—where the passing of light through the form accentuates its unique qualities—it was also used in other decorative objects. The techniques Tiffany used for cutting glass, and the chemical formulas he developed, allowed him to create a previously unreachable level of detail that brought about a rebirth of the medium.
Even though Louis Comfort Tiffany’s name is synonymous with the ornate style of America’s Gilded Age, little was known about the day-to-day operations of his firm, since records were destroyed in the early 1930s. Luckily, a cache of letters written by Clara Driscoll, a worker at the Tiffany Studios firm, was brought to light in 2005. After the Lead Glaziers and Glass Cutters Union strike in 1892, Tiffany created the Women’s Glass Cutting Department, an all-female department led by Driscoll. At its peak, the department ranged from 27 to 35 women, and produced iconic lamps, mosaics, and stained-glass windows.
Working with patents for opalescent glass alongside colored, plated, textured, flashed, etched, and enameled glass, artists at Tiffany’s glass studio in Corona, Queens, New York, created a staggering array of masterworks in glass. The firm’s versatility led to works that ranged in scope from small lamp screens to a number of monumental stained-glass windows, which the firm created for private and public clients.
Such creations included a series of windows created by Tiffany Studios for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Meriden, Connecticut, between 1892 and 1910. At a towering scale, these windows depict three separate, elaborately crafted scenes: a “Passionflower, Iris, and Mock Orange” landscape, a twelve-year-old Jesus debating with elders in a temple, and a highlight from the Good Samaritan parable. Breathtaking in both their narrative and aesthetic qualities, this set of windows demonstrates the range of techniques at the disposal of Tiffany Studios—from “confetti” and “spotted” glass to a drapery technique that created rippled texturing in the glass itself—and the mastery with which the studio created works.
The Tiffany name has also become synonymous with exquisitely crafted lamps. Though detailed patterned glass itself, with its recurring motifs of flora and fauna, captures the attention first, the lamps’ bronze bases—often forged at Tiffany Studio’s foundry in Queens—are just as intricately rendered.