Louis Comfort Tiffany is one of the most popular and well known designers of the 19th Century. His life span was from 1848-1933. His career as a designer thrived from the 1870s-1920s. His goal in life was the “pursuit of beauty.” His father, Charles Lewis, was the owner of a successful silver and jewelry company, Tiffany and Company. Despite the success of his father, Louis had different ideas. Instead of taking over the family business, he chose his own path, professional glassmaking. Louis created his own company in 1885. He explored multiple mediums in his studios. His studios produced a variety of art, such as mosaics, glass windows, lighting, pottery, metalwork, enamel, and interior.
Louis began his artistic journey as a painter, learning from several other artists, such as Samuel Colman and George Inness. Also, since he was financially well off, he traveled around with fellow artist, Robert Swain, to Europe, North America, and Africa. These travels influenced his artwork, and his painting, Snake Charmer at Tangier, Africa was displayed in an exhibit in Philadelphia in 1876.
Louis began focusing on decorative interior design in the late 1870s. His first major project was for his home and studio in the Bella Apartments of New York City. The first decorative glass window he created included the use of unique materials such as opalescent glass, crown glass, and jewels. The glass window imitated the strokes of a paintbrush.
Louis and fellow artist, Colman, had a business partnership and began decoratively furnishing an expensive New York mansion together for their most passionate clients, Louisine and Henry Osborne Havemeyer. This project allowed a blending of different styles, such as Celtic and Viking inspired furniture.
This began a series of multiple interior projects in which they decoratively furnished homes and public spaces for patrons.
Around 1982, Louis built a glasshouse in Corona, Queens, New York. Collaborating with an English glassworker, Arthur Nash, helped to develop furnaces that blended together different colors in a molten state to create effects of shading and texture. Louis named the blown glass from these furnaces and trademarked them. They were called Favrile, referencing the old English word, fabrile, meaning hand-wrought. The Metropolitan Museum of Art received fifty-six vases and roundels from Harry Osborne Havemeyer, one of the first collectors of Favrile. Later on, Louis presented multiple vases, with an extensive variety of styles and techniques. One of the most popular of these techniques was his “Lava” glass.
Louis’s leaded glass was very popular. Louis’s first rival and competitor, John LaFarge, also longed to revolutionize stained glass, which hadn’t changed much since the medieval times. Both competing companies created and patented their own opalescent glass. Louis Tiffany’s Favrile glass was largely successful because it allowed craftsmen to interchange the lines and textures of the material with details. In 1908, Tiffany Studios crafted Magnolias and Irises. This popular glasswork was significantly inspired by the River of Life. The magnolias and irises made of opalescent, multicolored glass demonstrate Louis’s unique talent of painting with glass.
Louis then branched off of interior design and went into lighting. His company produced intricate patterns and lampshades. Each lampshade was crafted differently despite using the same pattern. The individual selection of varying colors and types created unique lampshades. One of Louis’s most recognized pieces is his water lily lamp.
An extension of Louis’s popular Favrile and leaded glass was mosaics. Louis originally began creating these pieces for churches and fireplaces, but they blossomed into complete artworks. Thinking back on his European travels, he was largely inspired by Byzantine artwork in churches. In his mosaics, however, he added a wide range of colors and shading.
He also produced enamelwork and created plaques and vases made by his company. A few years later he started up a pottery studio. At the turn of the century, ceramics were a very popular trend in America, so Tiffany produced beautiful European inspired ceramics.
Since his father was the owner of Tiffany and Company jewelry, Louis was very knowledgeable and experienced in the field of jewelry design. After his father’s death, he was appointed as the art director in 1902 for Tiffany and Company. Like his other works, his jewelry designs gained mass popularity and attention and ultimately were successful as well.
Louis Tiffany also decorated and furnished his dream home, Laurelton Hall in Long Island. This was an eight level, eighty-four roomed country home. Laurelton Hall was the perfect exhibit of all his artistic abilities and unique aesthetic. Laurelton Hall was a vision of the artistic dreams Louis had, and he left a large amount of money for it to continue to develop even after his death. Sadly, after his death in 1933, the home was eventually sold and then sub-divided due to bankruptcy. After being abandoned, the home was destroyed in a fire, leaving his dream home in ruins.
Despite the tragedy of his home being ruined, several items were discovered and recovered for display.
Louis Tiffany was a talented designer and artist. He mastered many different mediums and executed beautiful pieces. His creations ranged from lampshades and vases to windows and mosaics and much more. Louis Tiffany and his firm are known as one of the most successful designers in history. Even today authentic Tiffany pieces are prized and worth thousands of dollars. Many collections of his work are displayed in museums everywhere, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Morse Museum in Orlando, Florida. Louis Comfort Tiffany is one of the most renowned, distinguished, and internationally famous designers of all time.
http://www.morsemuseum.org/louis-comfort-tiffany
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tiff/hd_tiff.htm
http://www.biography.com/people/louis-tiffany-9507399#synopsis