'Louis Comfort Tiffany: An Artist For The Ages'

Many evils have been committed in the name of eclecticism. The precept that beautiful things go together was applied in excess during the Nineteenth Century, when the rich had a misplaced faith in the compatibility of Mexican saddlecloths, Boulle card tables and Gothic whatnots. The fashion for Asia, far from being a spur to simplicity, was often the pretext to add yet another style to the decorating medley. Tiffany had a light touch, though, and he could mix and match without making a room look theatrical or antiquarian.

The furnishings and decoration from some of his other important commissions are also on display. His work for the Havemeyers is represented by part of the staircase balustrade, 1890-91, for the paintings gallery of their Upper East Side townhouse. The balustrade has gilt bronze scrolls inset with pieces of opalescent glass, and it shimmers even in the old black and white photograph of the room that is reproduced in the catalog.

The gallery was sparsely furnished to show off the art more effectively. But it was not a simple room. There were at least a dozen patterns with two or three wallpapers, several Oriental rugs, tiles, upholstery and portieres. The furniture, by contrast, was noticeably understated. At a time when gilt carved furniture was fashionable, the Havemeyers preferred Empire Revival pedestal tables and chairs of the most basic design.

Tiffany's early career as a glass designer coincided with his first decorating commissions. Glass was used for the sparkly mosaics and wildflower chandeliers that were made for the Havemeyers. Stained glass, a Western medium, was used in many of Tiffany's exotic interiors.

Some of his best stained glass designs had an aquatic motif; hence, the two panels on display from the "Four Seasons under the Sea," 1895-1900, that depict in greens and browns the fish and plant life at the bottom of the sea. The unevenly rippled glass contributes to the murkiness to suggest the visual distortion caused by the currents and uneven light.

The designers who worked for Tiffany were encouraged to study from nature. One later recalled that he was sent to the Bahamas to spend his time in a glass bottom boat, looking at marine life.

The stained glass lamp with a lily pad motif, 1899-1910, likewise, shows the green leaves of floating lily pads. Here, the depiction is more abstract, with the leaves simple round discs and the stems swirls of a lighter green.

The exhibition abounds in peacock tails and dragonflies, two popular motifs from the 1880s and 1890s. But other works are harder to place, even though they date from the same period. The fishbowl vase, 1893-96, is a case in point. Thematically, it is one of the many works that highlight Tiffany's indebtedness to Japanese art. But it is impressive as an example of virtuoso illusionism; it really looks, at first glance, like an ordinary fishbowl, with the swimming goldfish making small ripples in the water.

Tiffany was not a craftsman. Unlike William Morris, who learned a new skill every few years, Tiffany was not a perpetual apprentice, who spent his day reading old manuals and personally trying out new techniques. But he was very good at making things happen and he always hired the best people. He was, moreover, a perfectionist, who, according to legend, toured the workshops with his cane raised to destroy any vase or pot he did not like.

In Europe, Tiffany glass was exhibited at many of the most important fairs and collected by museums. Although proud of his success overseas, Tiffany continued to emphasize the home market. Thus, he was not especially anxious when European sales of his work declined in the early 1900s.

He must have been pained, however, by the waning interest in this country. Many artists fade in popularity, but Tiffany's reputation collapsed. For many years, beginning in the decade before his death, his work was classed with the clutter and furbelows of the previous century. Even among those who should have known better, Tiffany was irredeemably Victorian.

Possibly, this rejection was not only artistic, but also personal. Tiffany's optimism and ostentation, not to mention his indifference to politics, might have been off-putting in the 1920s and 1930s. "We are going after the money there is in art, but the art is there all the same," he said at the start of a career, notably deficient in self-torment and adversity.

The prejudice against Tiffany was widespread, though it is sometimes, perhaps unfairly, associated with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Beginning in the 1950s, a few pieces were on rotating display in the museum's newly opened design galleries. This recognition was, however, far from a total embrace of his legacy.

There was a parsing quality to the museum's representation of Tiffany. His contribution to Art Nouveau was squarely in bounds because Art Nouveau anticipated the simplification and stylization of the 1920s.

The type of piece that fits the museum's collection guidelines is the simple ocher vase, 1902, that is decorated with white flowers. No "trickery" or illusionism was used for the decoration.

But then there was all the other stuff - the mushroom inkstands and mosaic clocks, the pieces that had no place in the museum's collections because they violated the museum's rule against realistic or showy ornament. In the genealogy of Modern design, Tiffany was a first cousin once or twice removed.

Paradoxically, one of the most influential Tiffany revivalists was a curator at MoMA. Edgar Kaufmann (1910-89), an architecture critic, worked in the design department from the 1930s to the 1950s, where he organized shows on subjects like Danish bookbinding, and wrote layman's pamphlets on Modern design. (What is Modern Design? is a representative title.)

During these years, he built up a significant collection of Tiffany glass. Although he succeeded in donating one piece to the museum, his interest was largely a private matter. In many ways, Kaufmann was no different than any other office worker who pursues in his off hours a hobby of little interest to his colleagues.

Childless, he displayed his collection without any of the usual precautions. The precious wares were placed on the floor, lined against the walls of the living room. He was an adventurous collector with a rare taste for the lava vases, the molten, irregularly shaped pieces that were unappreciated during Tiffany's lifetime.

Other revivalists included the furniture designer Edward Wormley (1908-95) and the scholar Robert Koch (1918-2003), who wrote his dissertation on Tiffany's stained glass. Lillian Nassau (1899-1995), who was for many years the most important Tiffany dealer, dated her passion back to the 1930s, when she saw the beautiful lamps broken up so the metal could be melted down for scrap.

Institutionally, the Tiffany revival owed a lot to the provincial and second-tier museums. The Morse Museum, which was founded in the early 1940s for the preservation of Tiffany's work, was located near Orlando, Fla., which was then something of an agricultural backwater. And one of the first Tiffany retrospectives was conducted in a brownstone across the street from the MoMA, at the newly founded Museum of Contemporary Crafts (today, the Museum of Arts & Design).

The big museums seem to have played a less influential role during these years. This was true even of the museums with historic Tiffany collections that were, in part, on permanent view.

A white-spotted brown vase, 1893-96, which was probably inspired by the Native American baskets that Tiffany collected, is one of the nearly five dozen pieces the Havemeyers gave to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1890s. Another is the rare glass plaque that suggests the petal-like design of a sand dollar, 1893.

The rehabilitation Tiffany's image was completed so many years ago that it is difficult to imagine how his work could ever have fallen into disgrace - or into what one journalist called the "gutter of derision."

Visitors to this exhibition are in for a treat, thanks to the efforts of those who rescued the reputation of one of America's great designers.

The Toledo Museum of Art is at 2445 Monroe Street at Scottwood Avenue. For information, 419-255-8000 or www.toledomuseum.org.