Tiffany by Design: Exhibit Preview
Lamps on Display at Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Tennessee
Forty glass lamps from the New York studio of American designer Louis Comfort Tiffany are on display at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee.
The superb artistry of American designer Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) is celebrated by a rare presentation of 40 beautifully crafted glass lamps in Tiffany by Design, a special exhibition at Nashville, Tennessee's Frist Center for the Visual Arts from May 9 to August 24, 2008. The show is organized by the prestigious Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass in Long Island City, New York.
Tiffany and His Studios
Louis Comfort Tiffany, a landscape painter, went on to design stained-glass windows, lamps, ceramics, enamels, mosaics, furniture, vases, metalwork and textiles. From 1902 to 1932, his prolific New York studios produced numerous decorative objects inspired by nature and antiquity as well as the Near, Middle and Far Easts. The undulating curves of Art Nouveau and the organic geometry of the Arts and Crafts movement are easily discernible in Tiffany's windows, lamps and metalwork. Detail and craftsmanship were of paramount importance to him.
The Exhibition
Hundreds of designs, many closely related, were utilized in the fabrication of Tiffany Studios' numerous lamps. Tiffany by Design describes their alterations over the years, providing valuable scholarly insight into the artist's aesthetic vocabulary. The variations in the lamps' mostly interchangeable shades and bronze bases assured that each work remains unique. The adaption of various shapes and sizes of glass as well as changes in color schemes are thoroughly considered.
Signature works produced between 1900 and 1918 on display in Tiffany by Design include:
- Lotus Pagoda Library Lamp (1895-1900);
- Daffodil Library Lamp (1900-1910);
- Turtleback Chandelier (ca. 1905);
- Pond Lily Library Lamp (1900-1910);
- Pond Lily Globe (1900-1910);
- Dragonfly Library Lamp (1905-1910);
- Peony Library Lamp (1905-1910); and
- Favrilefabrique Reading Lamp (ca. 1915).
Women and Their Colleagues in the Tiffany Studios
Recent evidence sheds light on the important role of women in the Tiffany firm's Manhattan location. Uncovered letters indicate that Clara Driscoll (1861-1944), a longtime Tiffany Studios employee, designed a number of the company's iconic lampshades. The exhibition reveals how Louis Comfort Tiffany inspired his coterie of artists and artisans, including Driscoll and some 60 other women.
The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass
Dr. Egon Neustadt (d. 1984) and his wife, Hildegard, purchased a single lavish Tiffany desk lamp in 1935, then regarded as unfashionable. Over the next five decades, the couple assembled a vast collection of nearly 300,000 Tiffany works in glass. Neustadt's The Lamps of Tiffany (1970) remains to this day the definitive compendium of the designs, styles and colors of the Studios' lamps and glass. Prominent examples are on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New-York Historical Society and the Queens Museum of Art.
Tiffany by Design at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts is a delightful exploration of one man's aesthetic vision and its influence on the decorative arts of 20th-century America.
Sources:
- Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney, et al. Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: An Artist's Country Estate (exh. cat.). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.
- Neustadt, Egon. The Lamps of Tiffany. New York: The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, 1970.
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