Tiffany case
Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933), whose father founded the famous retailer Tiffany & Company (1837–present), was trained as a painter, and several of his canvases can be seen in the adjoining American Identities galleries. During trips to England as a young man, Tiffany became aware of William Morris, the designer, Socialist, and founder of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, whose workshops, Morris & Company, created beautifully wrought handmade objects. Beginning in 1879, Tiffany founded a series of design firms that eventually became Tiffany Studios. In these workshops, he supervised the production of extraordinary glass windows, vases, and lighting devices, as well as metal objects that were among the first American decorative arts objects to achieve international fame.
Although Tiffany considered his stained-glass windows a more prestigious art form than his glass lamps and vases, he is best known today for the latter two. On the fourth floor of the Museum are two splendid Tiffany landscape windows that were removed from a deconsecrated church in Brooklyn, as well as a display of the principal Tiffany vases in the collection. With the installation of lamps and vases here in Visible Storage Study Center, all of the Museum’s holdings of Tiffany are now on display.
Many of the works installed here have important provenances, or history of ownership. Some objects were owned by Laura Barnes, wife of Alfred Barnes, the famous Philadelphia collector of Impressionist paintings, and others belonged to René de Quelin, one of Tiffany’s shop stewards, or general managers. A third group donated by Charles Gould, a New York businessman and personal friend of the artist, was selected personally by Tiffany for the Museum.
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Visible Storage: Case 2 (Tiffany Glass)
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67.120.49a-b
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Tiffany Studios
Lamp
ca. 1910
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