Tiffany, Louis Comfort

Tiffany, Louis Comfort, 1848–1933, American artist, decorative designer, and art patron, b. New York City; son of Charles Lewis Tiffany. He studied painting with Inness and in Paris and painted oils and watercolors in Europe and Morocco. Later he established the interior-decorating firm in New York City which came to be known as Tiffany Studios. The firm specialized in favrile glass work, characterized by iridescent colors and natural forms in the art nouveau style. This work ranged from lamps and vases to stained-glass windows and a huge glass curtain for the national theater in Mexico City. His lamps became enormously popular in the 1960s and were widely imitated. In 1919, Tiffany established the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, which presently provides study and travel grants for art students. Tiffany is represented in the Metropolitan Museum by a painting, Snake Charmer at Tangiers, in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) by several glass pieces, and most completely in the Neustadt Museum of Tiffany Art (New York City).

Bibliography

See E. Neustadt's The Lamps of Tiffany (1971).

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Tiffany, Louis Comfort

Vase of Favrile glass made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York City, 1896; in the Victoria and …

(credit: Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

(born Feb. 18, 1848, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Jan. 17, 1933, New York City) U.S. painter, craftsman, philanthropist, decorator, and designer. The son of the famous jeweler Charles Louis Tiffany (1812–1902), he studied painting with American painter George Inness and in Paris; he was a recognized painter before he began to experiment with stained glass in 1875. He founded a glassmaking factory in Queens, N.Y., in 1878. There he developed an iridescent glass he called Favrile, which achieved widespread popularity in Europe. After 1900 Tiffany's firm ventured into lamps, jewelry, pottery, and bibelots. He is internationally recognized as one of the greatest forces of the Art Nouveau style.

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Tiffany, Louis Comfort (1848–1933) glass maker, interior designer; born in New York City. After early study with painter George Innes, he founded an interior design collaborative in 1879, which decorated in richly orientalist fashion important residences, including the Mark Twain house. But it was his exquisite art nouveau glass that brought international acclaim. His iridescent favrile glass (patented in 1894)—used in making his stained glass windows, chandeliers, tiles, and vessels in flowing organic forms—came from the Tiffany Furnaces (started in 1892) and the Tiffany Studios (1902–32). He also designed lamps, furniture, textiles, ceramics, and wallpaper, and in his later years turned to jewelry. He was an officer of Tiffany & Company, the jewelers, and he set up a foundation to support artists (1919).