:Since the establishment of Charles Lewis Tiffany's emporium of luxury goods, opened in 1837 and located on Broadway, the surname has called to mind glittering gems and gleaming precious metals.
Now, 170 years later, the glitter and gleam focuses on Mr Tiffany' son, Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose creative energy extended to virtually every medium and is currently the subject of no fewer than three exhibits on view around the city.
The three share the common themes of glass, innovative design and technology, and they also explore color and forms. Beyond that, each defines a man of exceptional vision, each from a different perspective.
Over in Queens, the exhibit of 20 lamps on view at the Queens Museum of Art drawn from the Egon and Hildegard Neustadt Museum collection is small but pivotal. Neustadt donated half his Tiffany glass collection to the New-York Historical Society, with the other half forming the Queens collection, which includes a recently discovered trove of Tiffany-related letters and documents. It is these letters, along with another significant stash from Kent State University, that are the genesis of the exhibition "A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls" on view at the New-York Historical Society.
The New-York Historical Society show portrays a forward-thinking man who acknowledged the talents of Clara Driscoll and her "Tiffany Girls," giving them the responsibility of executing the colors and patterns of his glass lamps and windows. The exhibit allows a detailed view of the lives of independent young women who lived and worked late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century New York City.
"Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall," on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes the creation of Tiffany's indisputable masterpiece: his country house, Laurelton Hall, a fantasy of color and design, where Tiffany planned and executed every last detail.
Clara Driscoll And The Tiffany Girls
Clara Driscoll is pictured in 1901 in her workroom at Tiffany Studios with her chief assistant, Joseph Briggs. "A New Light On Tiffany: Clara Driscoll And The Tiffany Girls,” The New-York Historical Society.
NEW YORK CITY — The jeweled colors and compelling forms of Louis Comfort Tiffany's glass assume an entirely new perspective in the groundbreaking exhibit "A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls." Reexamining not only the multifaceted genius of Tiffany and the legendary glass created at his shop, the exhibition brings forth new, and often surprising, information regarding the people that he entrusted to create the masterpieces that bear his name.
Currently on view at the New-York Historical Society through Memorial Day, May 28, the exhibition is curated by Margi Hofer, Martin Eidelberg and Nina Gray.
Trained as a painter, Tiffany retained that interest throughout much of his life, but early on he was captivated by the allure of glass. He was a skilled designer and a talented artist in glass, metal, ceramics, furniture and jewelry. It seems that there was nothing to which he could not turn his hand with great success.
Tiffany's designs earned the firm awards and accolades throughout the world, capturing prizes at the major expositions of the day and reflecting an air of good taste and prosperity for those that possessed his wares.
Two separate caches of letters, written between 1896 and 1907 and discovered only two years ago, have come to light and they bring at least a portion of the design aspects and Tiffany's involvement in some major projects into question. Unearthed at the Queens Historical Association and the library of Kent State University, the letters and documents provided the impetus for the exhibition.
Brilliant color defines the Dragonfly lamp that Clara Driscoll designed in 1899 and which was awarded a prize at the 1900 Paris International Exposition. "A New Light On Tiffany: Clara Driscoll And The Tiffany Girls,” The New-York Historical Society.
The author of the letters was Clara Wolcott Driscoll, one of Tiffany's chief designers, who headed up the group of women designers and glass selectors and cutters known as the Tiffany Girls.
Driscoll was an exceptionally prolific correspondent who wrote weekly round robin letters to her family back in Ohio, sometimes as many as 30 pages at once. Her letters detailed her work, that of her colleagues and also the personal lives of this group of independent young women who arrived in New York City in the late Nineteenth Century to practice the craft they had studied at art and industrial schools around the country. Other young women at Tiffany had been drawn from settlement houses around the city.
The Tiffany Girls were the artists who chose the colorful glass used in the exquisite creations that were and continue to be so prized. Tiffany referred to the process as "painting with glass." Assembling the varicolored glass pieces to form such images as the petals of flowers, the wings of dragonflies and other forms from nature required unique talent: an artistic eye and a dexterous hand. While the essential design of each group of objects was pretty much the same, it was the combinations of glass and mosaic that made each one unique.
