Friday, May 15, 2009 12:17 PM CDT
USA's Yesterdays: Louis Comfort Tiffany: Jack of all trades, masterfully done
By Hal Malehorn
In regard to the skills that Louis Comfort Tiffany demonstrated in the various arts, it is not remarkable that he has been compared to the typical 15th-century Florentine craftsman.
It was not unexpected for a Tuscan artisan to be skilled, for example, as a painter in oils, a sculptor, a builder of furniture, an embroiderer of ecclesiastical garments, and a designer of princely pageants.
Tiffany was similarly versatile: he was a painter in oils and watercolors, an interior decorator, architect, landscapist, ceramist, mosaicist, metal worker, jeweler, sculptor, designer of public pageants — and, by the by — a consummate worker in colored glass.
In other aspects, however, Tiffany differed markedly from his Italian antecedents: While the Tuscan artisans worked solely for exclusive, well-heeled patrons, Tiffany’s countless products were intended for private installations commissioned by the newly-rich, for general enjoyment in public buildings, and for practical use in middle-class homes. In fact, at one time his studios employed 300 workers crafting the items he designed.
But even though Tiffany fashioned Art Nouveau taste for an entire generation, well before his death the public interest in his virtuosity had dramatically waned.
Louis Comfort Tiffany was born Feb. 18, 1848, to Charles Tiffany, a noted jeweler and founder of Tiffany and Company in New York City. Young Louis became a leader of his boyhood peers and was creative and talented. However, he was also mercurial and obstreperous.
This headstrong streak in the lad caused his parents to send him to a private academy, and then to a military school on Long Island.
At age 18 the youth surprised his parents by opting to study art, rather than attending college. Nor did Louis show any aptitude or interest in eventually taking over the family firm.
Instead, young Tiffany frequented the studio of noted artist George Inness; that studio became a gathering-place for playwrights and artisans. Then and there Tiffany decided that his was to be a life devoted to the arts.
Taking up the paintbrush under Inness’s informal tutelage, Tiffany immersed himself in a prodigious output.
But in his approach Tiffany was unconventional, causing Inness to complain, “The more I teach him, the less he knows, and the older he grows, the farther he is from what he ought to be.”
One year’s enrollment in the National Academy of Design would serve as Tiffany’s sole formal instruction in the arts. Still, at age 19 Tiffany had a painting shown at that prestigious institution.
During the winter of 1868 Tiffany crossed the Atlantic to continue his studies. Working mainly on his own, or with a single colleague, in Paris he developed a new approach to pattern and color. In Spain, Tiffany took up water colors. And in North Africa he found exotic subjects to represent. All these discoveries would shape his later work.
Continuing a busy schedule of travel and exhibitions, Tiffany by the early 1870s had had toured extensively in Europe and the Middle East, and had participated in 27 shows.
The 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia piqued Tiffany’s interest in the decorative arts —applying the best artistry to interior spaces and to ordinary household items. Accordingly, in 1879 Tiffany organized the four-partner Tiffany and Associated Artists company.
This new group achieved national attention by being commissioned by President Chester Alan Arthur to refurbish several state rooms in the White House. As a result of this assignment, orders for work began coming in from owners of spectacularly opulent residences in New York City and elsewhere in the Northeast.
To satisfy his clients’ need to be fashionable, Tiffany employed the arts of Persia, India, Byzantium, North Africa and Japan. A wide variety of decorative accents received his unique touch: wainscoting, paintings, friezes, embroidered hangings, upholstery — and glass.
In the early 1890s Tiffany undertook his most ambitious project, designing a lavishly gilded and ornate Byzantine chapel, to be incorporated into the Arts Building of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
The finished room, “a kaleidoscopic tour de force in colored glass, mosaics, gilt metal, marble, gemstones and mother-of pearl,” garnered 54 medals from the exposition jury.
Elsewhere, the Tiffany company produced furniture, rugs, metalwork, fabrics, draperies and garden marbles.
As early as 1872 Tiffany had dabbled in what was to become his signature medium — glass.
Labeled “Favrile” (after the Saxon for “handcrafted”), this art form of blown glass incorporated the colors within the molten glass itself, rather than having colors painted onto the surfaces. After much experimentation at the furnace, Tiffany’s glass achieved, as well, iridescence. And, the process involved in producing it earned him several patents.
Moreover, Tiffany’s innovations influenced the stained glass industry’s flatware, the idea of blending up to seven colors to produce an infinite variety of tones; the layering of as many as eight panels to achieve greater depth; and the inclusion of lead lines as a feature of design.
So popular did his vibrant windows and standing glass screens become, in fact, that by 1885 he established the Tiffany Glass Company just to cope with the demand.
Sometimes contemporary independent artists were commissioned to contribute designs for Tiffany windows, among them, Frederick Church, Howard Pyle and Maxfield Parrish. At other times Tiffany designers translated into glass the works of recognized masters, such as Botticelli, Raphael and Gustav Dore.
Often these windows illuminated and enhanced the interiors of new churches being built. And not uncommonly Tiffany was charged with designing for the edifice its altar, pews, plaques, friezes, chandeliers and candelabra, as well.
However grandiose many of these works were, though, it was his vases, lamps, candlesticks, inkwells, trays, boxes and other more utilitarian objects that found their way into homes of more modest means.
These days such everyday items — and the larger ones — fetch astounding prices at auction, and grace museums and galleries around the world.
Louis Comfort Tiffany spent his last days at Laurelton Hall, an 84-room Persian mansion he designed in all particulars. His company went bankrupt in 1932, and he died on Jan. 17, 1933.
Years before, Tiffany had set as his goal to “bring beauty into every American home.” Most assuredly, both his purpose and his glass were equally transparent.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
