Tiffany's magic shines on

by Judith Prescott

Article published on the 2009-10-01 Latest update 2009-10-05 14:43 TU

Magnolias
(Photo: Yuri Molodkovets)

France has had to wait over a century to host its first-ever exhibition of work by the American Louis Comfort Tiffany, one of the great art nouveau designers. Now visitors to the Luxembourg Museum, on the edge of the capital's famous Luxembourg Gardens, can enjoy some 160 works, including Tiffany's signature table lamps as well as vases, ceramics, drawings and impressive stained-glass windows.

As the son of Charles Louis Tiffany, the founder of successful multi-million dollar jewellery business Tiffany&Co, the young Louis was expected to join the family firm.

Instead he started out as a painter. Eventually he set up his own interior design company which became a favourite of the wealthy, the famous and the fashionable. The writer Mark Twain and the White House both featured on Tiffany's client list.

Tiffany lamp
(Photo: Katherine Wetzel)

He is probably best-known for his lamps which are made from multicoloured glass. As a young man travelling in Europe, Tiffany was struck by the beauty of stained glass windows and the effect of daylight filtering through the coloured glass. He recreated this effect in his lamps which have become highly sought-after objets d'art.

Rosalind Pepall of the Museum of Beaux Arts in the Canadian city of Montreal is also one of the curators of this exhibition. She says Tiffany's popularity is due to his use of colour and his originality.

"He had a real talent for decoration and how you would include glass in decoration," she explains. "He would do innovative things and carry this into all his experimentation with glass. He had this originality which is the mark of a really true top designer and this is what attracted him to his clients. His glass was unlike anything else they had seen."

Use of coloured glass, says Pepall, came from the Arts and Crafts movement founded by William Morris in Britain.

Tiffany stained glass panel
(Photo: The Haworth Art Gallery)

But Tiffany is most often described, says Pepall, as belonging to the Art Nouveau movement popular at  the beginning of the 19th century.

"He painted flowers. Like many of the artists of the Art Nouveau movement, he was really inspired by the organic flow of the lines in nature," she says. "And you certainly see that in his works."

As this exhibition shows, Tiffany's stained glass windows are some of his most impressive work. As a student, Tiffany had studied glass-blowing and later he started to experiment with new techniques.  Using opalescent glass in a variety of colours and textures, says Pepall, he created his own unique style.

"For example, one of his big innovations was what he called 'drapery glass'," she says. "Instead of painting all the lines and the shadows of drapery, his craftsmen actually took the glass when it was hot and molten and they would crease and rumple it like drapery and then they would cut out the pieces and insert them into the windows. And it's very three dimensional, very thick."

Tiffany lamp
(Photo: DR)

Pepall explains that, like many artists before him, Tiffany's fame and reputation has grown since his death in 1933.

"He died in 1933 and he was old-fashioned. People weren't buying his things and the company went bankrupt in 1932." she says. "He was forgotten for a while until the late 50s. Then from that period on just more and more collectors.  museums, dealers, everyone started looking at Tiffany. And I know the auction sales, even with the economic downturn, are still holding their own and the prices are unbelievable actually."

And an example of just how much collectors are prepared to pay for the genuine article: in 1997, Christies auction house sold a Lotus lamp for a record-breaking 1.5 million dollars (one million euros).