Tiffany Floriform Vase 1903 signed
Rare tulip shaped Floriform Vase, design Louis Comfort Tiffany, manufactured by Tiffany Studios New York, 1903, Favrile-glass, signed
Signed with “R9180” (1903) and “L.C.T.” for Louis Comfort Tiffany bib.: A. Cooney Frelinghuysen, Louis Comfort Tiffany at the Metropolitan Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1998, p. 65
Description
The company Louis Comfort Tiffany was one of the most important and most famous art manufactures in the USA around the turn of the century. Alongside the famous Tiffany lamps and leaded glass mosaic windows, the glass vases are among the most important objects made by Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York.
Vases of the “Floriform” type range among the most desired glasses, as they were complicated to produce and therefore very expensive even around 1900. Tiffany pieces were – typical for the arts and crafts of Art Nouveau – strongly inspired by floral motives. In this case the cup is artfully designed like a stylized tulip. Shape, coloring, and iridescence are beautifully displayed here.
Floriform Tiffany vases are one of the “musts” of an Art Nouveau collection, as they document the mutual influence of the different art manufactories in Europe and the USA. The art glass from Loetz, for example, with its technically complex iridescence, would be inconceivable without Tiffany’s “Favrile” technique.
Artist
Louis Comfort Tiffany (New York 1848 – 1933 New York) was a famous American designer, artist and painter of American Art Nouveau. He was best known for his works in glass colored with metal salts and made a name for himself in the decorative arts at the time. In the course of his career, he created a unique style that combined outstanding craftsmanship with a love for natural shapes and bright colors. Nature had always been his inspiration and in his designs he tried, in his very own way, to capture its beauty forever. Tiffany designed lamps, glass mosaics, lead glass windows, glass vases, ceramics, jewellery, enamel and metalwork. Among the highlights of his work were countless high awards, including a Grand Prix at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition and his life's work “Laurelton Hall”, an 84-room home for his family in Long Island, New York.
Execution
In 1880, Louis Comfort Tiffany founded the "Associated Artists", in partnership with Lockwood De Forest, specialist in furniture and woodwork, Candace Wheeler, designer and textile specialist, and the painter Samuel Colman. The partnership has produced all kinds of decorative objects, including lighting, flooring, windows, mosaics and furniture. Together, the members of this partnership decorated many famous homes and buildings, including Mark Twain's home in Hartford, the former White House lobby, and the Veterans Room in the Park Avenue Armory. Later, Tiffany built large workshops with glass furnaces in Corona in Queens, New York. Together with Arthur Nash, a trained master glassmaker from Stourbridge, the desire grew to concentrate on glass art. These efforts led to the dissolution of the "Associated Artists" in 1885. In the same year, Tiffany founded his own glassmaking company, the "Tiffany Glass Company", which became known as "Tiffany Studios" in 1902. There, the high-quality glass products, for which Tiffany became so famous, were designed and produced under his own strict supervision and high quality standards. The Tiffany Studios in New York closed in 1930, three years before L. C. Tiffany's death.
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