Louis Comfort Tiffany

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Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 – January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who is best known for his work in stained glass and is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. Tiffany was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Thurber Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels and metalwork.

1 Personal life
2 Career
3 Death
4 Societies
5 Gallery
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Personal life

Louis was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company; and Harriet Olivia Avery Young. Louis married Mary Woodbridge Goddard (c1850-1884) on May 15, 1872 in Norwich, Connecticut and had the following children: Mary Woodbridge Tiffany (1873-1963) who married Graham Lusk; Charles Louis Tiffany I (1874-1874); Charles Louis Tiffany II (1878-1947); and Hilda Goddard Tiffany (1879-1908). After the death of his wife, he married Louise Wakeman Knox (1851-1904) on November 9, 1886. They had the following children: Louise Comfort Tiffany (1887-1974); Julia DeForest (1887-1973); Annie Olivia Tiffany (1888-1892); and Dorothy Trimble Tiffany (1891-1979).

He went to school at the Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His first artistic training was as a painter, studying under George Inness and Samuel Coleman in New York City, and Léon Bailly in Paris.

[edit] Career

He became interested in glassmaking from about 1875 and worked at several glasshouses in Brooklyn between then and 1878. In 1879 he joined with Samuel Colman and Lockwood de Forest to form 'Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated American Artists. Tiffany's leadership and talent, as well as by his father's money and connections, led this business to thrive.

A desire to concentrate on art in glass led to the breakup of the firm in 1885, when Tiffany chose to establish his own glassmaking firm later that same year. The first Tiffany Glass Company was incorporated on December 1, 1885, which in 1900 became known as the Tiffany Studios.

Tiffany used opalescent glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a unique style of stained glass. This can be contrasted with the method of painting in glass paint or enamels on colorless glass that had been the dominant method of creating stained glass for several hundred years in Europe. Use of the colored glass itself to create stained glass pictures was motivated by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and its leader William Morris in England. Fellow artist and glassmaker John La Farge was Tiffany's chief competitor in this new American style of stained glass. Both La Farge and Tiffany had learned their craft at the same glasshouses in Brooklyn in the late 1870’s.

In 1893 Tiffany built a new factory, called the Tiffany Glass Furnaces, which was located in Corona, Queens, New York. In 1893 his company also introduced the term, Favrile in conjunction with his first production of blown glass at his new glass factory. Some early examples of his lamps were exhibited in the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

He trademarked Favrile (from the old French word for handmade) on November 13, 1894. He later used this word to apply to all of his glass, enamel and pottery. Tiffany's first commercially produced lamps date from around 1895. Much of his company's production was in making stained glass windows and Tiffany lamps, but his company designed a complete range of interior decorations. At its peak, his factory employed more than 300 artisans.

He used all his skills in the design of his own house, the 84-room Laurelton Hall, in Oyster Bay, Long Island, completed in 1905. Later this estate was donated to his foundation for art students along with 60 acres (243,000 m²) of land, but destroyed by a fire in 1957.

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park (Orlando), Florida, houses the world's most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany including Tiffany jewelry, pottery, paintings, art glass, leaded-glass windows, lamps, and the incredible chapel interior he designed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the close of the Exposition, a generous benefactor purchased the entire chapel for installation in the crypt of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York in New York City. As construction on the Cathedral continued, the chapel fell into disuse, and in 1916 Tiffany removed the bulk of it to Laurelton Hall. After the 1957 fire, the chapel was rescued by Hugh McKean, a former art student in 1930 at Laurelton Hall, and his wife Jeannette Genius McKean, and now occupies an entire wing of the Morse Museum which they founded. Many glass panels from Laurelton Hall are also there; for many years some were on display in a local restaurants and businesses in Central Florida. Some were replaced by full scale color transparencies after the museum opened. A major exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Laurelton Hall will open in November, 2006.

Tiffany maintained close ties with the family firm. The Tiffany Company sold many products produced by the studios. He became Artistic Director of Tiffany & Co. after his father's death in 1902. The Tiffany Studios remained in business until 1928.