Tiffany - Louis Comfort Tiffany

Louis Comfort Tiffany was keen to be an artist. He frequented artist studios and travelled to Europe, Africa, and Palestine. During this time, around the 1870's he would have seen some of the great Arts and Crafts pioneers and he would have seen the stained glass windows in many great churches and cathedrals. On his return, he experimented and built his own kilns to produce glass; to his own recipe creating the colours he desired. He developed his own colours and techniques which meant that each piece of glass formed the picture without the addition of enamel or paint on the surface. What was left over from his pieces would be used to produce lampshades and soon everyone wanted a Tiffany lamp or a glass window. In 1892 he formed the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company. Establishing a glass works at Corona Long Island in 1893 and had Arthur Nash as his vice president. Arthur Nash had come from Webb, England. The public taste at the time preferred iridescent glass and Tiffany registered the trade name of Favrile for his iridescent glass; derived from Fabrile, which means handmade in Olde English. This was made in many shapes and colours. For these and the lampshades, he worked in the Art Nouveau style with peacock feathers, dragonflies and flowers influencing his designs. In 1887, the factory at Corona expanded with a foundry to make metal objects and bases. It was at the height of popularity in 1902 that Charles; his father, founder of the firm, died. Louis took over the running of Tiffany and Co. He further developed enamelled ware, Favrile pottery and jewellery (not a financial success as it was very expensive to make). Glassware at this time was either dark blue or gold iridescent called Tableware, and the other called Display ware with an enormous variety of styles. Styles included Agate, Cypriote (which has a pitted iridescent surface), Lava Glass (which has dribbles of golden glass), Diatreta Glass (a glass body held within a cage made of glass also produced by Steuben), Jack in the Pulpit glass, Goose neck glasses imitating Persian perfume sprinklers, Millefiore glass (glass cane flowers applied within the surface), Paperweight vases (vases encased within a layer of clear glass), cameo, intaglio cut, reticulated glass (which was blown against a wire frame for use on lamp bases), Tel el Amama (which was a turquoise satin glass named after excavated glass in Egypt) and red Samian vases. After World War I, Art Nouveau became very unpopular. President Roosevelt ordered that a glass screen at the White House be destroyed. The market was full of cheap mass produced pressed Carnival glass. The factory ceased production and closed down in 1928. A. Douglas -Nash bought the Corona glassworks, renaming it A. Douglas - Nash Corporation. Louis died in 1933. It was only in the 1950's that the glass of Tiffany was rediscovered. Robert Koch at Yale was researching into some of the rooms that Tiffany had decorated, and he then decided to write a study of Tiffany's work. It was from this that the great revival of interest of Tiffany began.