Tiffany Studios - Design New York Wednesday, December 7, 2022 | Phillips

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  • Louis Comfort Tiffany excelled at everything he turned his hand to, whether windows, glass, metalwares, enamels, ceramics or jewelry. While his firm’s blown glass has long been overshadowed by its more renowned leaded glass lamps and windows, Louis Tiffany was probably most proud of, and best loved, the blown glass vases his glasshouse first produced in late 1893. When museums around the world wanted to acquire an example of the firm’s work made during Tiffany’s lifetime, they didn’t purchase a window or lamp, they invested in a vase. Tiffany’s authorized biography, published in 1914, does not have a single mention of leaded glass lamps. There is, however, an entire chapter devoted to his blown glass, and that chapter opens by essentially saying that Tiffany’s widest fame was achieved not through his acclaimed windows, but with his vases.

     

     A similar example Flower-form vase on display at the Tiffany Furnaces in Corona, New York.

     

    Nothing remotely like Tiffany’s glass was being produced in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Louis was determined to explore the inherent qualities of glass, and once his firm was making its own glass, he was free to experiment with color, form and technique. His pieces were true examples of art glass, meant to be appreciated for their profound aesthetics rather than function, and his extensive knowledge of botany inspired Tiffany to endow his firm’s works with a sense of nature’s all-encompassing beauty. Flower-form vases were amongst the earliest and most distinctive blown glass shapes produced by the house, and Louis’s passionate affinity for plant life is evident in the exquisite flower-form on offer. While flower-form vessels are all sculptural in design, they vary in shape, size, color, and decoration. The present example exhibits not only an impressive height and classic proportions, but it is further enhanced with an adventurous palette that evokes a highly painterly quality, as well as a splendidly rendered impressionistic interpretation of a lush flower with beautifully stylized overlapping petals, striated threads and radiating feathery leaves. The work marvelously reveals the supreme skill of Tiffany’s glassmakers and aptly demonstrates Tiffany’s unparalleled artistry in glass.

    • Provenance

      Private collection, Tokyo
      Gallery Yaezaki Furukawa, Tokyo
      Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2010

    • Literature

      Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany: The Collected Works of Robert Koch, Atglen, 2001, pp. 172, 211 for a similar example on display at the Tiffany Furnaces in Corona, New York
      Martin Eidelberg and Nancy A. McClelland, Behind the Scenes of Tiffany Glassmaking: The Nash Notebooks, New York, 2001, p. 82 for a similar example on display at the Tiffany Furnaces in Corona, New York

Property from a Private International Collection

16

Flower-form vase

circa 1902
Favrile glass.
15 in. (38.1 cm) high
Underside engraved L.C.T. and T5472.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for $115,920

Contact Specialist

Benjamin Green
Associate Specialist

Associate Head of Sale

bgreen@phillips.com
+1 917 207 9090

 

Design

New York Auction 7 December 2022