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Tiffany--Master Lamp Maker
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17359 |
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THE ARTS
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1 / 1990 |
2,106 Words |
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Alice Thorson
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Since its invention at the turn of the century, perhaps no home fixture has enjoyed greater popularity than the famous Tiffany lamp, archetypally a glowing, jewel-like cascade of flowers and greenery supported by a tree-trunk stylized bronze base. Less common but no less acclaimed are Louis Comfort Tiffany's stained glass windows - ecstatic, iridescent hymns to nature's glories, aflutter with peacocks and parrots before shimmering waters and sun-streaked skies. But the scope of the celebrated American designer's achievement extends far beyond his popular lamps and spectacular windows to encompass all manner of objects d'art, including vases, desk ornaments, and jewelry, as well as forays into mosaic work and ceramics.
Tiffany spent the early part of his career designing not only objects but entire interiors. A pioneer of the profession of interior decoration at a time when Americans were concerned to project an image of elevated taste not only at home but in their public spaces - churches, clubs, and government buildings - in the early 1880s, he secured commissions from such famous clients as Mark Twain and President Chester A. Arthur.
Tiffany was a genius at marketing, in the course of his sixty-year career founding a succession of companies through which he saw his designs into mass production. Yet he was no businessman when it came to measuring the ratio of effort and expense to return. Where his work was concerned, he was known to be a temperamental perfectionist, prone to destroy pieces that dissatisfied him, regardless of the hours of work invested. Had it not been for the financial support of his father, Tiffany might never have achieved the dissemination of his aesthetic, which has made such an irrevocable mark on American interior design.
Career Hallmarks
Now nearly forgotten, and perhaps rightfully so, are Louis Comfort Tiffany's youthful efforts as a painter, where he first exercised his lifelong commitment to naturalism and nineteenth-century exotica, which were to remain the hallmarks of his career.
A selection of these early paintings - nature studies and scenic records of his visits to North Africa - forms part of the truly stellar array of Tiffany objects featured in Masterworks of Louis Comfort Tiffany, a major exhibit of the artist's work on view from September 29 through March 4 at the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. Mounted with generous support from Tiffany & Company at a cost of three-hundred thousand dollars, the exhibit is billed as the "most important assemblage of the artist's work since his spectacular rise to prominence at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago."
To be sure, it is a landmark exhibit. The organizers borrowed heavily from private collections and many of the sixty-plus objects featured have never before appeared in a museum. Also noteworthy is the exhibit's gorgeously illustrated accompanying catalogue, containing recent scholarly essays that marshall a wealth of biographical detail into a veritable social history of turn-of-the-century America.
The times apparently were ripe for Louis Comfort Tiffany. The approach of the twentieth century found America Janus-faced toward the march of history, its allegiance torn, as it is at
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