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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Getty Research Institute 
 
 https://archive.org/details/artworkoflouisctOOunse 
 
Of this book 
 
 ten copies have been printed upon 
 parchment and four hundred 
 and ninety-two copies have 
 been printed upon Japan 
 paper for private 
 distribution 
 
THE ART WORK 
 OF 
 
 LOUIS C. TIFFANY 
 
THE ART WORK 
 OF 
 
 LOUIS C. TIFFANY 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 MCMXIV 
 
COPYRIGHT, I9I4 
 BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 
 
TO 
 
 MY CHILDREN 
 
 
FOREWORD 
 

 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This volume is not written for the public, but for the children of 
 Louis Comfort Tiffany and at their request. Much concerning their 
 own father which may be known to his fellow artists or to workers 
 in various fields of art, or to persons in different employments and 
 separate ranks of life, is unknown to them. No reason for surprise 
 in this: it is the commonest thing in the world to find that the last 
 persons to be informed of what a professional man has achieved in 
 his life work are his children. For the former, more than any other 
 man, uses his home as a rest and refuge from the ideas that beset him 
 at his daily task. With his nearest and dearest he rarely if ever “talks 
 shop.” What more natural, then, for them to discover with something 
 of a shock that if anything should happen to their father they would be 
 left without a record of the various lines of endeavor he pursued? 
 
 It is this condition confronting them which caused their father to 
 listen to their reproaches and overcome his natural dislike for anything 
 that savors of self-seeking and agree to the printing of a book which is 
 to some extent a biography but primarily a record. 
 
 Sehor Sorolla has painted a likeness of Louis C. Tiffany with the 
 environment of the latter’s home in summer about him. Brush in 
 hand, he sits on the terrace before his easel, surrounded by masses of 
 his favorite flowers, a friendly old dog by his side, and the blue reach 
 of one of Long Island’s land-locked harbors in the background. 
 Painting in the sunlight, his features are fixed in the effort to apprehend 
 truly what he sees, and, having understood, to make the selection, 
 
 XV 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 and, having made the selection, to get that out of his mind on to the 
 canvas. 
 
 In the same fashion, if one wishes to fix in print the character and 
 output of an artist, one must place him in relation to his environment. 
 But while the likeness in oils is that of a man at a given, chosen 
 moment, the likeness in a memoir has to take four decades into account 
 and show the workman employed with many other activities than that 
 of painting flowers. The environment is not only varied, it is most 
 complicated. For one must consider, not only the man’s activities 
 in art, but the conditions under which art appears in his country and 
 lifetime. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 Given a young man with a character of his own and an original cast 
 of mind, and it is inevitable that he should begin by criticizing the 
 work of his elders, noting the weak spots, exaggerating them perhaps, 
 and placing himself in opposition. Although Louis C. Tiffany is the 
 son of a man who established his name the world over as a goldsmith 
 and jeweler, his earlier years were devoted to painting, not to crafts¬ 
 manship. One perceives in him, during his painter years, a reaction 
 against the commercial element in the business Mr. Charles L. Tiffany 
 built up. Is that surprising? 
 
 For one thing, time is sure to bring with it the realization that 
 too exclusive a belief in what is termed the fine arts, too narrow an 
 estimate of the world-wide mystery of art in general, produces in 
 artists a peculiar desiccation of the imagination. We call it sometimes 
 “falling into a rut,” and have to lament its presence in men of very 
 high attainments after we obtain a comprehensive view of their life 
 work. In the case of the son, it was his father’s great success as a 
 business man which enabled him to see the world and revise that very 
 natural and normal error which causes painters and sculptors to speak 
 in derogatory terms of all forms of art that are not termed “fine,” or, 
 if you prefer, “pure.” Particularly was the art of the craftsmen of 
 
 XVI 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 the Orient illuminating, not forgetting such Western artists as Whistler, 
 La Farge, and Mempes, who felt the same movement about the same 
 time. Travel in Algiers, Morocco, Palestine, not to speak of Persia, 
 India, China, Japan, undertaken by those who can see below the 
 surface, must give a wrench to many prejudices imbibed from art 
 schools and academies in which the majority of men are blind followers 
 of those whose eyes never see. 
 
 No one can study the primitives and the artists of the Renaissance 
 in Europe without perceiving that there must be something wrong 
 in the conventions under which most of our painters and sculptors 
 and architects have been vegetating, something wrong in their ideas 
 and ideals, which may have been fitting for other epochs, to other 
 religious, political, and educational formulas, but assuredly do not suit 
 the conditions as they exist in Europe and America to-day. 
 
 Even among painters there are degrees established; even in the 
 painter’s gild there is caste. Thus the artist in oils looks down on him 
 who prefers water colors, and has little regard for pastelists! These 
 distinctions and involuntary snobberies in the branch of art which 
 attracts the majority of artists would be purely amusing if they did not 
 offer a pathetic side. For they occasion very often this very serious 
 result: Artists who can never rise above mediocrity in oil-painting but 
 have a charming talent in water colors or pastel, devote their lives 
 obstinately to the vehicle they can not drive well, because they have 
 been allowed to think that to work with any other thing than oils will 
 cause them to “derogate from their nobility.” This is what they 
 learn in their school days; this is a feeling they discover later among 
 painters. Many who would succeed in one beautiful craft or another 
 are obstinate in their devotion to some one of the “fine” arts. 
 
 The Ghirlandaios of Florence received their name of “garland 
 maker” owing to the proficiency of the first of the family in goldsmith 
 work. Nor is their example at all uncommon. Many painters and 
 sculptors began as craftsmen. The latter are nearer the people, for 
 
 xvii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 they fabricate useful objects belonging to daily life, while the artist 
 who produces objects of the fine arts, so called, is more remote. His 
 work usually demands on the part of the observer a longer education 
 for its appreciation. There lies a gap between the people and objects 
 of pure art which forces the artist-painter into a narrow sphere and com¬ 
 pels him to seek the restricted public of amateurs and connoisseurs. 
 
 It is this apparent exclusiveness and aristocracy in the fine arts which 
 has given room for much error and helped impede the course of art in 
 modern times. The inference has been drawn that objects of art 
 without any practical end in themselves, objects without direct use¬ 
 fulness, are necessarily of higher value than such commonplace things 
 as tools, utensils, and weapons, table ornaments and furniture, objects 
 used as personal decorations. These last are regarded as non-esthetic 
 and therefore inferior to things of pure or fine art like a symbolical 
 picture, a heroic statue, a church window. As a crowning touch to this 
 tendency to establish a system of caste in the realm of esthetics we get 
 the cry “art for art’s sake” along with some of the most childish and 
 insincere grotesques the world has ever seen. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 As far back as we can look through the vistas of the past to the 
 beginnings of what fairly may be termed art, all forms were originally 
 useful. The ancestors of the earliest Europeans, whoever they were, 
 drew and carved the figures of animals on tusk and on wall of cave, in 
 order to hypnotize thereby the beasts which were their food and sup¬ 
 plied them with clothing against the cold. Early Belgians and Britons 
 may have taken—probably did take—some esthetic pleasure in the 
 dark blue decorations of woad laid on their skins. But there was a 
 meaning, a direct use, in these paintings and stainings connected either 
 with religious beliefs like the marks made on their faces by high-caste 
 Hindoos or with the identification of persons. These traditional deco¬ 
 rations still survive in the tattoo marks of sailors. Perhaps they were 
 
 xviii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 a primitive blazonry of rank and precedence. This is the more probable 
 because Polynesians and other folk on a primitive plane have good 
 and useful reasons for the dots, lines, or figures stained or painted 
 upon face and body or tattooed in the skin. Our Indians paint them¬ 
 selves, not so much for beauty—although that enters into it—as for 
 witchcraft, as we may term their stage of religion. Designs which 
 we are surprised to recognize as singularly original and excellent in 
 line, proportions, color, carved on columns, shields, and paddles by 
 New Zealand natives, prove of the greatest use to their owners. 
 
 Is it not of use to wield a paddle that will frighten off sharks and 
 help the fishing? Could one ask for a better shield than one so carved 
 and painted that it may paralyze the beholder, like the Medusa head 
 on the aegis of Pallas Athene? Since among moderns of our stripe 
 paintings and sculptures also are frequently valued for their decorative 
 effects alone, not for any esthetic contents in the way of meaning or 
 symbolism which they might convey to the initiated, one finds it very 
 difficult to draw the line and establish exactly where non-esthetic, util¬ 
 itarian art ends, and fine, pure, esthetic-only art begins. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 How an artist arrives at the production of a work of art will always 
 have about it an air of mystery. Scarcely are we justified therefore in 
 blaming our forebears because a similarity in sound caused them to 
 confuse a maisterie or handicraft with that secret ritual of certain 
 Greeks called mysterion which was practised notably at Eleusis by 
 the initiated. The words are so alike, to begin with, though derived 
 from different languages! To the simple layman the art of a trade 
 or handicraft is so obscure, so hidden, so mysterious! And the error 
 grew during the Middle Ages when “mystery” plays were given by 
 maisters or craftsmen, and under the influence of the church their tenor 
 was of things supernatural and therefore mysterious. Mystery, mais¬ 
 terie—the plot thickened. . . . 
 
 XIX 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Nor were the earlier artists behindhand in magnifying their office 
 by appeals to the credulity of laymen. By shrouding the technical 
 processes of the several arts in mystery they ran a race with the priest¬ 
 hood. A somewhat closer analogy than with priests lies with the 
 alchemists, whose methods and materials were very similar to those of 
 painters, enamelers, glass-makers. Between chemistry and painting 
 the connection has been intimate at all times and never more so than 
 at present, witness the obligations to science of the plein-airists:—paint¬ 
 ers of sunshine. 
 
 From the Byzantine seventh century down to seventeenth century 
 France we find hand books used by artist-artisans—the claviculae , 
 the schedulae , the libri diversarum artium full of the spirit of Free 
 Masonry, the spirit of the gild, the “mystery” of a sect or priesthood; 
 and there are frequent signs of jealousy of the secular artist shown by 
 the teacher of religion. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 Indeed with the best intentions and frankest mind in the world, an 
 artist cannot teach laymen much concerning the way in which the 
 object of art has birth, for the artist is rarely an examiner of his own 
 mental processes. His cast of mind is almost always the opposite to 
 an analytical one. We see that it takes a long time for a painter or 
 sculptor, a musician or actor to learn the rudiments of art activity. But 
 that does not tell us how, when, or why the creative act occurs. It 
 merely means that each art demands more or less faithfulness in practice, 
 more or less study and preparation, industry and concentration, labors 
 which all workers have to perform whether they remain pupils and 
 copyists, or rise to the level of originators, creators, artists of mark. 
 
 Undoubtedly there is a certain degree of pleasure in such an expres¬ 
 sion, a certain element of desire that others shall be pleased, or at 
 any rate moved, by some thrill which is akin to pleasure. Yet it 
 may well be questioned if the happiness which the artist desires to rouse 
 in others bulks largely in the matter. Altruism is not very potent. Even 
 
 XX 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 the selfish pleasure the artist feels in his own creative act may be, and 
 in fact usually is, overrated. It seems likelier that there is some com¬ 
 pelling force infinitely bigger, infinitely subtler, which urges man onward 
 whenever the environment is favorable. And that force naturally shows 
 itself in certain individuals who by nature are fitted for such activities. 
 The force may seek its vent in youth, in middle or in old age. It may 
 confine itself to one line of endeavor and issue by one narrow outlet, or 
 it may appear in several, as we find to be the case in such many-sided 
 men as Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo; in Albrecht Diirer, 
 El Greco, and Benvenuto Cellini. 
 
 Still another element is the desire for beauty. But here we meet 
 the difficulty of deciding what beauty is, owing to the difference of 
 opinion concerning its presence or absence in a given object, or even 
 in that most obvious standard, the human form. There is the fact 
 that from time to time men appear—sometimes singly, sometimes in 
 groups—who have what seems a vocation, to adopt a word used 
 by the religious, their call being to express emotion or thought in 
 movement or in sounds or in concrete forms. Their coming has 
 the look of such activities of the brain as characterize inventors, for 
 which we have no satisfactory explanation at present, although mankind 
 must have reached its various stages by the exercise of this faculty. 
 Yes, when one reflects upon it, the process of getting subjective 
 thoughts, impressions, feelings out of one’s mind into objective reality, 
 where they can be seen, heard, appreciated by others, is certainly a 
 marvellous thing. 
 
 Artists must always have supplied some deep-lying need. In some 
 epochs they seem to have appeared in families or clans, as if they 
 served not so much individual as collective expression and represented 
 the instinct for art in a community or tribe. In North America there 
 were tribes who made a specialty of carved and ornamented stone 
 pipes. Mexico, Japan, China had their art centres, some of which 
 linger to the present day, where a specific kind of pottery, basket 
 
 XXI 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 work, weave was fabricated by families. But, concerning the blossom¬ 
 ing of very marvellous fine art, history does not give us much light as 
 to the wherefore at one period rather than the why at another. Epochs 
 of great national success in war, or expansion in colonies, or race 
 movements, or great calamity; epochs of great accumulated wealth, or 
 the entrance from outside of novel ideas—these have been supposed 
 to be accompanied or followed by outbursts of art-production. But 
 history contains too many such epochs during and after which no 
 artistic revival ensued. Whatever they may spin, these agreeable, nay, 
 fascinating theorists! we are really quite at sea regarding the kind of 
 people, the sort of country, the favorable psychic conditions, when and 
 where art is likely to bloom. 
 
 The arts appear to rise like religions in the most unexpected spots and 
 to spring from obscure roots. Like religions, they grow, unobserved 
 at first, among humble folk—very conscious yet strangely unselfcon¬ 
 scious folk—waxing strong in the face of ridicule and sometimes at 
 the expense of “common sense.” 
 
 A conspicuous example of a religion continuing in defiance of 
 common sense is the pantheon of the Greeks, a people who scarcely 
 can be called a foolish one. Could anything imagined be more 
 preposterous than the actions of the deities to whom the Athenians 
 expected that Pericles, Socrates, Xenophon, Plato should bow with 
 respect? Communities modeling themselves on the manners and 
 morals of those gods could scarcely exist. 
 
 The arts have been often nearly as preposterous and impossible to 
 dovetail into the actual life of the people among which they flourished, 
 from the heavy nose rings, labrets, leg and arm rings of blacks and 
 Indians to the modern furniture of Germany. Traditions have had as 
 powerful effects in the arts as in religion. Tradition forced the world 
 to accept with rapture what passed away from all reasonable connection 
 with the actualities of the present long ago. To take an example a 
 century back: the so-called “colonial” architecture in America. Could 
 
 xx ii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 anything have been less suited to the climate of our eastern seaboard 
 and to the habits of the early nineteenth century? Yet during its 
 prevalence it had a great vogue; of late years it is enjoying a revival in 
 all parts of Canada and the United States. Or, in painting, the brown 
 tones conventionally accepted for a century or more in Italy, France, 
 Germany, and England as the adequate representation of figure scenes 
 and landscape, a fashion that went so far that painters did not dare use 
 green pigments to reproduce foliage—for to paint leaves green was 
 considered vulgar! 
 
 In sculpture the last three centuries actually forbade the use of 
 colors! These aberrations or conventions are usually the result of 
 some tyranny exerted over the field of esthetics by a family or gild of 
 artists forming what we call a school. Schools are still possible to-day 
 where religion remains authoritative and government monarchic. But 
 in the greater part of the world these ideals for the control of man no 
 longer obtain, or else they linger in a feeble stage, owing their prolonged 
 existence to a dislike to overturn what was good enough for ancestors. 
 
 With the triumph of individuality in politics and religion, ideas as to 
 art partake of the general discontent and unrest. It is only by adapting 
 the word “school of art” to a very different thing that we can use it at 
 all. There are still men of force in the arts who are imitated by pupils 
 and others. Such are Claude Monet, landscape and flower painter, 
 Whistler and Sargent, Rodin the sculptor. How imitation of these 
 masters sometimes works out is seen among followers of the last named. 
 A young sculptor, impressed by the rude blocks of marble from which 
 certain heads, figures, etc., by Rodin emerge, and by his fanciful use 
 of the “hand of god” in sculpture, could think of nothing better to do 
 than in all seriousness to model, emerging from a mass of roughened 
 marble, a solitary hand—holding a cigarette! 
 
 It is only with much qualification that one can say of the present that 
 a “school of art” exists. 
 
 France and the United States, having destroyed the power of caste 
 
 xxiii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 and divorced religion from the State, are attempting to give every 
 person the same opportunity. The final result should be to raise the 
 status of the writer and artist as typical men of brains. At the same 
 time the tendency must be toward a change in patrons, or those who 
 support such persons. In place of the church, the king, the noble, the 
 millionaire, we have the broad masses, educated as well as the forego¬ 
 ing on the whole, if not better than they, and perhaps less open to preju¬ 
 dices and conventions, more unsophisticated, less self-conscious, readier 
 to give ear to any new message that may come from far or near. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 Art for the people, if we may judge by the past, is sure to be freer 
 from tradition than that of the bygone schools and is likely to have 
 a larger element of the useful. In other words, the arts and crafts 
 will gain, relatively speaking, on the fine arts. Already are legislative 
 halls, railway stations, and opera houses liable to be not only costlier 
 but more beautiful than the palaces of the rich, even than the homes 
 of religion. One sees a definite stream setting away from easel 
 pictures and household marbles toward as beautiful walls, hangings, 
 furniture, table-silver as the age can produce. While there is still a 
 great and increasing demand for mural painting, owing to the erection 
 of municipal and governmental buildings whose architecture demands 
 such adornments, the field for painters has broadened out so tremen¬ 
 dously during the past half century that the old limitations imposed by 
 artists on their own gild have gone by the board. As to those who 
 cling to the view that art lies only in the hands of painters and sculptors, 
 their patrons are tending to become relatively fewer as time goes on. 
 No profession is more overcrowded. Clients do not keep increasing; 
 it is rather the other way. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 Among the artists who have led the way in this change there is 
 none who has affected the taste of the public more profoundly than 
 
 XXIV 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Louis Comfort Tiffany. And the reason is not far to seek. With a 
 tenacity rarely seen among those who when young have been subjected 
 to the high-sounding claims of academical painters he has refused to 
 limit his curiosity as an artist to one or two paths in art. He has 
 followed first one road, then another, without heeding the formulas of 
 his fellows, who seem always singularly enraged if one of the fraternity 
 deviates from the unwritten rules of the gild. Now he has turned 
 toward stained glass, and again to mosaic, or to pottery, or to enamels, 
 or else to tapestries and rugs, or at another time to jewelry. He has 
 made special studies of decoration and lighting, and, though for 
 many years interested in floriculture, he has given much attention to 
 landscape architecture and house building. In some branches he has 
 achieved a world-wide reputation; in others he is scarcely known to the 
 general public, in still others he has been so content to pursue the study 
 for his own enjoyment that hardly a person in his immediate circle 
 knows what he has achieved. 
 
 XXV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Foreword. 
 
 . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xi 
 
 List of Illustrations • 
 
 . 
 
 xxix 
 
 Tiffany the Painter 
 
 I 
 
 3 
 
 II 
 
 Tiffany the Maker of Stained Glass • 
 
 ■ • • 13 
 
 Favrile Glass .... 
 
 III 
 
 . . 23 
 
 Enamels and Jewelry 
 
 IV 
 
 29 
 
 Textiles and Hand Stuffs 
 
 V 
 
 • • • 39 
 
 A Decorator of Interiors 
 
 VI 
 
 45 
 
 A Builder of Homes • . • 
 
 VII 
 
 • • • 53 
 
 As Landscape Architect 
 
 VIII 
 
 65 
 
 Afterword . 
 
 . 
 
 73 
 
 Index . 
 
 
 . . 79 
 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Mr. Tiffany among the Flowers 
 
 Painted by Sorolla, 1911 
 
 PAINTINGS BY 
 
 A Church in Morlaix, Brittany • 
 Painted in 1890 
 
 Woodland. 
 
 Painted in 1894 
 
 Spring. 
 
 Painted in 1898 
 
 Algerian Shops. 
 
 Painted in 1895 
 
 The Cobblers at Boufarick • 
 
 Painted in 1888 
 
 A Street Scene in Algiers 
 
 Painted in 1895 
 
 The Pool. 
 
 Painted in 1896 
 
 The Peacock. 
 
 Painted in 1903 
 
 In the Fields at Irvington 
 
 Painted in 1879 
 
 Market Day in Nuremberg • 
 
 Painted in 1897 
 
 The Studio. 
 
 Painted in 1896 
 
 PAGE 
 
 .Frontispiece 
 
 MR. TIFFANY 
 
 .Facing v 
 
 .Facing 5 
 
 .6 A 
 
 .6 B 
 
 .6 c 
 
 . . 6d 
 
 .8a 
 
 .8 B 
 
 .8 c 
 
 .8 D 
 
 .IO A 
 
 XXIX 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 Mother and Child. 
 
 Painted in I 895 
 
 Feeding the Flamingoes ....... 
 
 Painted in 1885 
 
 Peonies. 
 
 Painted in 1 883 
 
 STAINED GLASS 
 
 Memorial Window, “ St. Mark ”.Facing 
 
 The first Tiffany Window in American glass in combination with antique 
 glass. Placed in the Episcopal Church in Islip, L. I., in 1878 
 
 Flower, Fish and Fruit Window. 
 
 Made for Miss M. E. Garrett, of Baltimore, Md., in 1885, for transom 
 in dining room 
 
 Rose Window. 
 
 A domestic Mosaic window of ornamental and conventional floral design 
 made in 1906 for general exhibition purposes 
 
 Medallion Window. 
 
 Executed in 1892 for general exhibition purposes to show the application 
 of Tiffany Favrile Glass to windows of thirteenth-century design 
 
 Medallion Window. 
 
 Designed to show the application of Tiffany Favrile Glass to windows of 
 thirteenth-century design. Placed in the First Church of Christ, Fairfield, 
 Conn., in 1908 
 
 The Entombment • . 
 
 Designed for the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893, and later placed in the 
 Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City 
 
 By the Stream. 
 
 A domestic figure window with landscape background. Designed in 1884 
 
 The Valiant Woman.. . 
 
 Designed and executed for the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn, N. Y., 
 in 1902 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 o B 
 
 I O C 
 
 1 O D 
 
 *5 
 
 I 6 A 
 
 I 6 B 
 
 16 c 
 
 16 D 
 
 1 8 A 
 
 I 8 B 
 
 20 A 
 
 XXX 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chancel Window at St. Michael and All Angels’ Church, 
 
 New York City .20 b 
 
 Designed and executed in 1894 
 
 The Four Seasons .20 c 
 
 Exhibited at London and Paris in 1892 
 
 The Bathers .22 a 
 
 Designed for Capt. J. R. Delamar in 1912 
 
 Library Window .22 b 
 
 Placed in Chittenden Library, Yale College, in 1890 
 
 FAVRILE GLASS 
 
 
 Iridescent Lustre Vase. 
 
 Facing 25 
 
 Seventy-second Street Collection 
 
 
 Damascene Vase. 
 
 26 a 
 
 Dark Iridescent Vase, with Iris motif .... 
 
 26 B 
 
 Decorated Favrile Jar. 
 
 26 c 
 
 Decorated Favrile Vase. 
 
 26 D 
 
 Peacock Feather Vase. 
 
 28 A 
 
 ENAMELS AND JEWELRY 
 
 
 Jewel. 
 
 Facing 31 
 
 From the Walters Collection 
 
 
 Necklace. 
 
 • 3 2A 
 
 From the Walters Collection 
 
 
 Wide-mouthed Bowl, decorated with Red Flowers • 
 
 . 32B 
 
 Small Round Pot, with Flower Decoration • 
 
 . 32c 
 
 Jar, decorated with Toadstools. 
 
 . 32D 
 
 Peacock Lamp. 
 
 • 34 A 
 
 Designed for Mr. Charles A. Gould 
 
 
 Three-handled cup, decorated with Grape Clusters • 
 
 . 34 B 
 
 xxxi 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TEXTILES AND STUFFS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ante-Pendium, embroidered in Gold and studded with semi¬ 
 precious Stones.Facing 39 
 
 Venetian Lamp.4 OA 
 
 Tapestries and Pottery.4° B 
 
 Wall Hanging; Pine Cone motif.4 2A 
 
 Wall Hanging ; with Water Lilies.4 2 B 
 
 INTERIOR DECORATIONS 
 
 Fireplace and Mantel; Seventy-second Street House • Facing 47 
 
 Mosaic Head of Joseph of Arimathea.Facing 48 
 
 The Tiffany Chapel.Facing 49 
 
 Exhibited at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. Now in the Cathedral 
 of St. John the Divine, New York 
 
 Veterans’ Room; Seventh Regiment Armory . 50 a 
 
 Fireplace and Mantel; Studio of the Seventy-second Street 
 
 House.Facing 55 
 
 An Interesting Corner in the Bella Apartment . 56 a 
 
 Dining Room in the Bella Apartment . 56 b 
 
 Mr. Tiffany’s Original Sketch for the Seventy-second Street 
 
 House.Facing 57 
 
 A Mantel and Fireplace; Seventy-second Street House • • • 58 a 
 
 A Fireplace ; Laurelton Hall.60 a 
 
 The Veranda ; Laurelton Hall . 60 b 
 
 The Court ; Laurelton Hall . 62 a 
 
 The Dining Room ; Laurelton Hall . 62 b 
 
 The Terrace ; Laurelton Hall.* Facing 67 
 
 The Fountain; Laurelton Hall.68 a 
 
 Main Entrance and Tower; Laurelton Hall • 7 ° A 
 
 Tower and Terrace; Mrs. Lusk’s Residence . 70 b 
 
THE ART WORK 
 OF 
 
 LOUIS C. TIFFANY 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 
 Louis Comfort Tiffany was born with a golden spoon in his mouth, 
 but the spoon was immediately tucked away and he was seldom per¬ 
 mitted to remember its existence. His father, the eminent goldsmith 
 and jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany, and his mother, who was Harriet 
 Olivia Young before her marriage, did not believe in spoiling children 
 by allowing them to live on a scale such as their fortune warranted. 
 Education should be thorough, but luxuries few, and spending money 
 curtailed. Born February 18th, 1848, their son was still at school when 
 the Civil War was fought, but like many other school boys of that 
 period we can imagine how he deplored the fate of having been born 
 too late to take any part in the contest. Some of his fellow artists in 
 later life such as George B. Butler, Elihu Vedder, and Winslow Homer 
 had been to the war. As he grew up he felt the longing for expression 
 which indicates the coming artist and usually makes him cold toward a 
 college career, so that at the age when a youth in his circumstances 
 is pretty sure to be at the university he was haunting the studios of 
 George Inness, N. A., and Samuel Colman, N. A., the latter one of the 
 founders and first presidents of that Society of Painters in Water 
 Colors which became the American Water Color Society and also one 
 of the original members of the Society of American Artists, merged 
 later into the National Academy of Design. 
 
 George Inness was a man peculiarly fitted, through certain sides of 
 his character, to rouse the interest of a pupil. His incisive, out-spoken 
 
 5 
 
TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 
 views on art were supplemented by a stimulating if somewhat chaotic 
 philosophy in which the sublime ideas of Swedenborg took a prominent 
 place. I remember hours passed in his studio in the old University 
 building on Washington Square when he would stand before his easel 
 making and unmaking a picture with rapid strokes of his brush, all 
 the while pouring forth a stream of talk in which, unlike that of other 
 artists, a strong religious feeling appeared and was lost, only to reappear 
 again like the white streaks which tinge a river below the cataract. 
 Inness in 1878 attempted to fix some of these fleeting ideas in Harper's 
 Monthly when he wrote: 
 
 “The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual 
 nature and, secondly, to enter as a factor in general civilization. And 
 the increase of these efforts depends on the purity of the artist’s motives 
 in the pursuit of art. Every artist who, without reference to external 
 circumstances, aims truly to represent the ideas and emotions which 
 come to him when in the presence of nature is in process of his own 
 spiritual development and is a benefactor of his race. No man can 
 attempt the reproduction of any idea within him from a pure motive 
 or love of the idea itself without being in the course of his own regen¬ 
 eration. The difficulties necessary to be overcome in communicating 
 the substance of his idea (which in this case, is feeling or emotion) to 
 the end that the idea may be more and more perfectly conveyed to 
 others, involve the exercise of his intellectual faculties; and soon the 
 discovery is made that the moral element underlies all, that unless the 
 moral also is brought into play the intellectual faculties are not in 
 condition for conveying the artistic impulse or inspiration. The mind 
 may, indeed, be convinced of the means of operation, but only when 
 the moral powers have been cultivated do the conditions exist, necessary 
 to the transmission of the artistic inspiration which is from truth and 
 goodness itself. Of course no man’s motive can be absolutely pure and 
 single. His environment affects him. But the true artistic impulse is 
 divine.” 
 
 6 
 
3Him 
 
TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 
 And again: “Rivers, streams, the rippling brook, the hillside, the 
 sky, clouds—all things we see—will convey the sentiment of the highest 
 art, if we are in the love of God and the desire of truth.” 
 
 Inness did not give instruction in painting; his way was to criticise 
 or appreciate the work of a young artist from time to time. Perhaps 
 the disquisitions into which he launched were sometimes confusing, 
 for they were likely to carry the mind of the learner far afield. But he 
 had a good deal of William Morris Hunt’s inspiriting quality. He set 
 high ideals before the student. He was a colorist and as such could 
 not fail to appeal to Tiffany. 
 
 Samuel Colman was a man of less intense, more methodical character, 
 who dealt with landscape in a large way. There was more of the 
 patient, painstaking teacher in him, and if not so strong a colorist as 
 Inness, if he did not have the latter’s infinite variety, nor his power to 
 express emotion through landscape, if he lacked the picturesque light 
 and shade of Inness which attracted and repelled yet always kept the 
 attention, still, there were sterling qualities in him that showed them¬ 
 selves in a certain nobility of work within narrower lines. The odd fact 
 that Samuel Colman came of a Swedenborgian family and Inness was 
 a Swedenborgian may be set down as a mere coincidence. Colman’s 
 father was a seller of books and engravings in New York where his son 
 was born in 1832. He exhibited for the first time in 1850 and traveled 
 in Europe during 1860-1862, going abroad again for five years in 1870. 
 Tuckerman in 1867 wrote of him: “The delicacy of this artist con¬ 
 trasts strongly and perhaps unprosperously with the more material 
 attractions of our popular landscape painters; but to the eye of refined 
 taste, to the quiet lover of nature, there is a peculiar charm in Colman’s 
 style which sooner or later will be widely appreciated.” The justice of 
 this appreciation was verified some years ago when Mr. Colman, who 
 had retired from active life in New York for a long while, held a sale of 
 his pictures. It was then recognized that a very charming talent had 
 lain perdu. He founded with James D. Smillie in 1867 the water color 
 
 7 
 
TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 
 club that became in time the present American Water Color Society 
 and was its first President. 
 
 The pupil must have shared this master’s love of water color. Indeed 
 Isham, an excellent judge of his fellow artists, has written concerning 
 him. “There was much of Colman’s love of warm, pure color in 
 his paintings in transparent wash or in gouache on rough straw-board, of 
 Italian or Mexican scenes, that used to light up the early exhibitions of 
 the Water Color Society, the firmness of outline and energy of drawing 
 being probably the result of French training.” 
 
 These last words refer to a third artist whom Tiffany admired and 
 visited, Leon Belly of Paris, who, like Samuel Colman, was a landscapist 
 who traveled in northern Africa, Egypt, and Palestine and made his 
 mark. Jules Breton in Nos Peintres du Si'ecle says he painted Egyptian 
 scenes “of an exact sort in which, however, one wished for more emo¬ 
 tion. His pictures of Palestine impressed me more favorably, particu¬ 
 larly his impressive canvas representing the Dead Sea.” And in the 
 Salon of 1867 he notes his “superb views from Africa.” Like Colman, 
 the arts of the Orient appealed to him very strongly and this agreed with 
 Tiffany’s nature. Though he did not work with L. Belly he did study 
 hard under Bailly, a thorough teacher of drawing who lived at Passy 
 and took particular pains with the young American. It may be re¬ 
 marked, however, that neither Belly’s, Inness’s, nor Colman’s work was 
 reflected in that of Tiffany. He went his own way after the modern 
 fashion in art which seeks to encourage individuality, unlike the earlier 
 traditions of schools and gilds which made for uniformity. 
 
 In 1870 Tiffany was elected to the Century Club. In 1871 he was 
 accepted as Associate of the National Academy of Design and in the 
 following year he married Miss Mary Woodbridge Goddard. He was 
 a member of the American Water Color Society and for many years a 
 constant contributor. It was about this time that Tiffany enraged the 
 “legitimate” water colorists or sticklers for “wash” by using body 
 color freely. Acrimonious were the remarks in the press and the 
 
 8 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 

 ' 
 
TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 
 studios over this audacity. Body color was a crime! This narrow¬ 
 ness exists to-day, although it is shown in other ways. Not only must 
 you pray like your neighbor, but you must use the same pigments in 
 the same way. If not—out you go! In 1877, when the Society of 
 American Artists was established by artists who felt that the leaders of 
 the National Academy were too narrow in their views, he was one of 
 the founders along with Inness, Colman, Wyatt Eaton, La Farge, Martin, 
 and Saint Gaudens. Three years later his election as National Academ¬ 
 ician did not make him any the less a friend of the new Society. The 
 establishment of the Architectural League found him equally receptive. 
 
 The period 1870 to 1890 was characterized by an unusual movement 
 in art matters by no means confined to New York, a movement that 
 showed itself by the foundation of societies and organizations through 
 which it was hoped to enlist the interest of the public. The National 
 Sculpture Society, which still flourishes, the New York Etching Club, a 
 band of gallant but perhaps premature pastellists, and the New York 
 Society of Fine Arts, these last no longer of this world, were started 
 at that time. Tiffany was working out some of his ideas in other 
 mediums than oils and water colors even then, but he was guided by 
 movements indicated by such organizations for the encouragement 
 of the narrower “fine arts.” 
 
 In the early seventies we find Tiffany in Algiers enchanted with the 
 broad masses of Moslem architecture, the long level lines of mosques 
 and their surrounding buildings cut by the trunks and shadows of 
 palms. Here is a view in 1874 called “The Pool” which is typical of 
 the strong sunlight, the color, the contrasts that Decamps loved to 
 reproduce. At the same time we find him catching the character of 
 individual Orientals as in “Cobblers at Boufarik” (1888) and “Street 
 Scene in Algiers,” genre pictures from the Orient in which one feels 
 the colorist as well as the painter of figures, a feeling for masses of 
 light and shade as well as a sense of proportion in the grouping of 
 human figures with relation to the background of architecture or land- 
 
 9 
 
TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 
 scape. On the other hand he did not, for all his experience of Europe 
 and Algiers, disdain the home field or domestic genre. “In the Fields 
 at Irvington” (1879) is a perfectly natural, unselfconscious scene from 
 domestic life where interest centres on the small child with face 
 turned to the spectator, the other three faces being averted or concealed. 
 This charming unpretentious canvas has been reproduced here in colors, 
 but the yellow tone is a little too prominent in the print. “Woodland” 
 is another illustration which rather inadequately represents Tiffany in 
 landscape. “The Studio,” reproduced here in colors, has a musical 
 quality in its color and composition. Note the upward sweep of the 
 curves beginning with the arm of the half clad model seated on the floor 
 rising by the broad fronds of a potted palm to the highlights on sus¬ 
 pended lanterns. “Peacock” is a stronger and clearer presentation of 
 the same sweeping curves, where the nude model, seated, offers through 
 the lines of legs, torso, neck and lifted left arm the harmonious upward 
 waves which culminate in the neck and head of Juno’s bird. In this we 
 have more distinctly enunciated a bit of symbolism. The seated figure 
 may be called Psyche. With the peacock as the symbol of worldliness 
 and sensuous beauty, being a bird of pride supposed to lack intellect 
 and soul, we may contrast the butterfly which Psyche holds out to 
 the peacock as the traditional symbol of immortality. Psyche’s face 
 accentuates the contrast between the superior and inferior. Above the 
 bird’s head the fruit-laden branches continue the sweeping lines and 
 carry the eye back again to the seated figure. “Peonies” is an example 
 of Tiffany’s power of painting flowers with an admirable combination of 
 arrangement and orderly disorder, at the same time that full justice is 
 done to the beautiful rich colors of blossoms and vase. It would be 
 easy to add to these examples, but the singular variety of his work com¬ 
 pels one to call a halt. 
 
 Tiffany’s leaning toward the Orient was recognized by his election 
 to the Imperial Society of Fine Arts in Tokio; he became also a member 
 of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris, while his exhibits at 
 
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TIFFANY THE PAINTER 
 
 the Exposition Internationale at Paris in i goo won a gold medal and the 
 title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In 1903 Yale University 
 gave him the honorary degree of Master of Arts. 
 
 During the earlier period of his life we find Tiffany a student with 
 masters of landscape but extending his scope into landscape with 
 figures, thence to pictures in which the figure is everything, finally 
 to larger decorative work where figures are employed with flowers 
 and still-life to express emotions of a poetic or musical kind in paint. 
 The colorist in him becomes an ever more important element and 
 prepares the way for those creations in stained glass through which he 
 has become known far beyond the borders of his own land. And 
 though the multiplicity of demands on his time occasioned by his 
 labors as a craftsman tended gradually to limit his work in painting 
 and water colors, he has never renounced easel work but continues to 
 give such time as he can spare to his brush and palette. 
 
 11 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 TIFFANY THE MAKER OF 
 STAINED GLASS 
 

CHAPTER II 
 
 TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 During his travels in England, France, Germany, and Italy it could 
 not fail to strike a painter possessed of a feeling for color that modern 
 stained glass as produced in Europe lacks the fundamental quality 
 which separates the colored glass window from mosaic, or painting 
 on the wall, that quality, without which the stained glass window may 
 be said scarcely to have a reason for existence. It may be argued in 
 extenuation of the deplorable coldness of this glass that the cloudy 
 skies of northern Europe, the dark atmosphere of great cities, lead 
 people away from such “dim religious light” as the cathedrals favored 
 in the age of the splendor of Gothic architecture. 
 
 Practical reasons may well have caused the gradual introduction of 
 lighter tones, especially in palaces, gild halls, town halls, libraries, and 
 other places where it was necessary to have light enough for reading. 
 But this was only one reason. A deeper-going cause was the rarity 
 among artists of the appearance of the color-sense, something that ex¬ 
 ists or does not exist in a man, something that seems to inhere in the 
 eye or optic nerves, something that no amount of teaching and expe¬ 
 rience in painting can do more than approximate. Colorists are men 
 apart. At one period they suddenly start up in Holland and form a 
 great art epoch. In the middle of the nineteenth century they appear 
 with Delacroix and the Barbizon men in France. But always they are 
 antagonized and decried by artists and critics who lack the gift, and see 
 nature in outline rather than in color. Being in the majority, the 
 
 15 
 
TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 latter persuade the public that color does not count for much when 
 weighed in the scale against form. And they are entirely honest and 
 convinced in this opinion. Slowly, however, the public comes to see 
 that for such art-products as painting the most important ingredient is 
 color, and in time the colorist is exalted. 
 
 How much more is the color sense vital and necessary in the artist 
 who attempts stained glass! 
 
 Consider a moment the difference between looking at a painting on 
 a solid surface darkened still further by the paint, and looking into a 
 material in which color is fused, this material so placed that light falls 
 through it! 
 
 Coming back to America where the skies and atmosphere, summer 
 and winter, seem to ask for interiors sheltering the eyes from an excess 
 of brilliancy, Tiffany could not but realize that here was a branch of 
 art neglected, or rather badly served, in Europe, which might offer new 
 fields of delightful work to the new world. 
 
 The first windows were mattings, lattices of wood or open-work stone, 
 skins, or slabs of ice (under the Arctic Circle), horn, thinly wrought 
 alabaster, and at last glass. And the first glass we may imagine as a 
 material discovered by potters in search of glazing to make their pots 
 impervious to water, which glaze, built up by hand in shapes just like 
 clay, and then subjected to the heat of the kiln, formed the earliest 
 vessels of glass. That the Byzantines had glass windows on a small 
 scale is pretty certain, but window glass as we know it must be credited, 
 not to the people of the Mediterranean, but to those of northern Europe. 
 If they did not invent the use of colored or stained ecclesiastical glass, 
 which, apparently, they took after the Crusades from the expert glass 
 mosaic artists of the late Greek empire, it is probable that they did 
 begin the use of glass for ordinary windows, pushed by a climate which, 
 in winter at least, exacted a closed room lit from outside. 
 
 Language gives us a clew. 
 
 The word glass belongs to the Teutonic languages and has been allied 
 
 16 
 
TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 to glow and glare, as if it meant the “shining” thing. But the Kelts, 
 who preceded the Teutons in Europe, have the same word for a color. 
 Irish glas means gray or bluish gray, like steel. Welsh glas means 
 “blue, greenish gray.” Glaukos, “shining” is a close parallel in Greek. 
 A similar word for amber among the Teutons got into late Latin as 
 “glesum.” We may imagine that the earliest glass imported by the 
 Phoenicians into northern Europe was a kind of bottle glass in gray 
 and blue tones and was called the “blue-gray” stuff by the Kelts, who 
 gave the word to the Teutonic tribes, alternately conquered by them or 
 their conquerors in turn. As soon as glass was made in Europe it 
 would be natural that those who could afford the luxury would 
 substitute this material for the parchment or horn used by primitive 
 races of the north in their narrow window openings to let in the light 
 and exclude the cold. 
 
 Originally, we must argue by analogy, windows or the gratings in the 
 window were stopped by materials which allowed some light to filter 
 through, but did not permit those inside to see out. Transparent glass is 
 a comparatively late invention. When stained windows, therefore, came 
 up in Europe it found people indifferent because unused to the con¬ 
 venience of transparent panes. The heavy leads and thick, dark-toned 
 panes in old cathedrals, like those of Chartres, Beauvais, York, etc., 
 delighted their eyes and did not bother them by reason of the dimness 
 of the light that fell through. This is a point which should be remem¬ 
 bered by those who study old and modern glass windows. There was 
 beauty of color in windows before clear glass panes, transparent as 
 air, so much as existed in Europe. 
 
 Cennino Cennini, who was living in Padua about 1400, gives in his 
 Trattato della Pittura directions how to glue sheets of paper together to 
 obtain a piece as large as the window, “draw your figure first with 
 charcoal, then you will fix it with ink, your figure being completely 
 shaded as if you were drawing it on a panel. Then your master glass- 
 worker takes this drawing and spreads it on a table or board, large and 
 
 17 
 
TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 flat, and according as he wishes to color the draperies, so bit by bit he 
 cuts the glasses, and gives you a paint which is made of well-ground 
 cuttings of copper, and with this paint with a small minever brush, 
 piece by piece, you paint the shadows on the glass, matching the folds 
 together and the other parts of the figure according as the master has 
 cut the pieces and laid them together; and with this paint you can 
 always shade—on every kind of glass. Then the master, before joining 
 the pieces together, as is the custom, bakes them moderately in iron 
 cases on hot coals and then joins them together. * * * There is 
 
 this advantage, that it is not necessary to paint the ground color, as 
 glass can be had of every color.” 
 
 Nowadays, in America at least, much greater care goes to the 
 preparations for a window. A color sketch for composition and 
 the distribution of colors leads to the grand cartoon. From this two 
 transfers are made on paper. One is kept as a guide for the artist 
 who arranges the leads and puts the glass pieces together. The other 
 is divided on the lines of the leads, being cut into separate patterns 
 which are arranged on a glass easel; this is placed against a strong light. 
 The patterns are easily removable. Selecting the sheet of glass which 
 seems to hit the right color for a given section of the design, the artist 
 removes the paper pattern at that point from the easel and passes the 
 sheet of colored glass between his eyes and the opening left by the 
 pattern he has removed. Marking that part of the colored sheet which 
 has been selected, the glassman then places the paper pattern upon it 
 and cuts round its edges with a diamond. The piece thus shaped is 
 then fixed with wax to the glass easel whence the paper pattern has 
 come. Thus, piece by piece, glass in various colors and shades takes 
 the place of the paper. Changes are often made. If a color will not 
 come otherwise, a second colored piece is placed over or under the 
 first in order to obtain the required tint or tone; this is called plating 
 or “cased” glass. 
 
 The leads are also different from mediaeval leads. They are not so 
 
 18 
 

 
 
TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 heavy, and they are used so as to aid rather than interfere with the picture. 
 Attempts have been made successfully to suppress the leads, sometimes 
 by fusing together adjacent edges of glass patterns or even by arranging 
 the patterns between two great sheets of plate glass, the transparent 
 sheets acting as supports to keep the window from buckling and the 
 pieces from shifting from their proper order. Beside and beyond all 
 these and other mechanical contrivances, more important than these, is 
 the fact that we have a far wider range of color in glass than did the 
 mediaeval workmen. 
 
 The result of all these experiments and inventions may be summed 
 up in the statement that modern American window painters can use 
 glass as a painter uses his colors, lightening or darkening his work at 
 will. By the employment of opalescent glass they can produce such 
 effects of marvellous delicacy as Corot achieved beyond all other oil 
 painters in his treatment of white clouds shot with tender rosy tints. 
 
 As early as 1875 Mr. Tiffany was at work on inventions which tend 
 to minimize the use of enamels not only for draperies but for flesh tones. 
 At Thill’s glasshouse in Brooklyn he succeeded in obtaining some 
 glass which could be used for draperies without further painting and 
 firing. But it was not till 1878 that he established a glass-making 
 house of his own. Andrea Boldini, of Venice, who represented himself 
 as one of the workers in the Murano factory under Dr. Salviati, was in 
 charge of the furnaces. This house burned down, as did a second. 
 From about 1880 to 1893 Mr. Tiffany experimented at the Heidt glass¬ 
 house in Brooklyn, constantly improving upon his original ideas and 
 learning to his cost that it would be useless to expect to make really 
 beautiful windows unless he could control furnaces of his own where 
 his ideas would be carried out without interference from those who 
 either could not or would not understand. 
 
 Finally, in 1893 a glasshouse was established at Corona, Long Island, 
 and put in charge of Mr. Arthur J. Nash, a practical glass manufacturer 
 from Stourbridge, England, who superintended the building of the 
 
 19 
 
TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 factory. In 1902 the title of the factory became the Tiffany Furnaces. 
 Although once destroyed by fire this establishment remains and 
 flourishes. 
 
 It was in 1878 that Mr. Tiffany had an opportunity to put his ideas 
 of a church window into operation. English and Continental glass 
 relied for effects of perspective, light and shade and details on sur¬ 
 face paints or pigments burned or fused upon the glass, after the 
 fashion Cennino Cennini described five hundred years ago. Starting 
 from the principle that these effects ought to be expressed in the 
 substance of the glass itself, he sought to make a material in which 
 colors and combinations of color, hues, shades, tints and tones should 
 be there without surface treatment, so far as possible. 
 
 “The Four Seasons,” a domestic window exhibited in Paris and 
 London, illustrated here, was wrought in glass without the employment 
 of any pigments. 
 
 “The Valiant Woman” was executed in the same fashion in 1902 
 for Mr. T. E. Stillmann and placed in the Church of the Pilgrims, 
 Brooklyn Borough, New York City. It is a double window in which 
 architectural and tree motives are used to balance the composition, and 
 the lead lines reinforce the main outlines of the figures. The only 
 concession to enameling is found in the faces of the valiant woman and 
 the Orientals gathered in admiration before the terrace on which she 
 stands. The lower squares of this double window not shown here are 
 richly colored with marble tones and flower decorations. They carry 
 inscriptions: 
 
 THE WOMAN THAT FEARETH THE LORD, SHE SHALL BE 
 PRAISED. GIVE HER OF THE FRUIT OF HER HANDS 
 AND LET HER OWN WORKS PRAISE HER IN THE GATES. 
 
 In an article called “American Art Supreme in Colored Glass,” 
 contributed to the Forum in 1893, Mr. Tiffany deplores the fact that 
 while “to-day this country unquestionably leads the world in the 
 production of colored glass windows of artistic value and decorative 
 
 20 
 

 
TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 importance,” yet the managers of the World’s Fair at Chicago had not 
 made provision for showing American windows. “An intelligent 
 exhibition would have aided greatly in crushing out the purely 
 commercial spirit which too often invades this field.” In this paper 
 Mr. Tiffany had the boldness to compare modern American glass with 
 mediaeval and to its advantage. “I maintain that the best American 
 colored windows are superior to the best mediaeval windows.” 
 
 In the old windows the folds in the draperies were obtained by 
 placing pieces of glass of the same color but of various shades side by 
 side, or by painting the shadows upon a sheet of glass with a brown 
 enamel. In America a pot-metal glass is forced into folds and wrinkles 
 while in a molten condition; these folds are adaptable to many forms of 
 drapery. Such glass gives the effect of light and shade in draperies 
 without using so many lead-lines and doing away altogether with paints 
 and enamels. 
 
 “In the windows of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, 
 for example, the foliage and colors were produced largely by means of 
 stains and enamels, in this country we produce foliage by introducing 
 into a sheet of glass while molten, other pieces of glass of the proper 
 colors, having stems, leaf and flower forms.” 
 
 Mr. Tiffany spoke with authority, from long experience and after 
 many disappointments in men and materials. The next seven years 
 were crowded with interest. Success crowned the efforts which had 
 extended crescendo for at least two decades. At the Universal of 1900 in 
 Paris he took the Grand Prize and was decorated Chevalier of the Legion 
 of Honor. 
 
 One point touched upon by Mr. Tiffany should not be overlooked. 
 The new method demands much more thought and care on the part of 
 the window designer. He can not turn his sketch over to the foreman 
 and expect results worthy of his reputation. He has to superintend every 
 stage of the work just as carefully and with the same zeal as during the 
 evolution of an oil painting. For as in painting the introduction of a 
 
 21 
 
TIFFANY THE MAKER OF STAINED GLASS 
 
 color in one part of the canvas, or of a tint or tone, has its blissful or 
 baneful effect upon all that has gone before, so with a stained glass 
 window; no other eyes than those of the original artist can tell whether 
 the fresh note added to the rest is the right or the wrong one. Infinite, 
 endless labor makes the masterpiece. 
 
 Three lancet openings of a window in Christ Church, Fairfield, Con¬ 
 necticut, consist of medallions containing religious groups set in an 
 elaborate system of interlaced decoration. The subjects of the medal¬ 
 lions are Christ as infant, with the doctors in the temple, exhorting, 
 calling the children to him, healing the sick, raising the dead, etc. 
 
 A decorative cross of interlacing lines and ribbons set against rich tiles 
 belongs to igo8. It is purely secular and depends for its effect on the 
 deep and glowing tones as much as on the original design. 
 
 A sylvan composition of two girls in the woods plucking flowers by 
 the brink of a stream represents windows for the home. 
 
 But it would be too long to enumerate the windows for churches, 
 public buildings, and homes which have issued from the Tiffany studios 
 under the direction of Louis C. Tiffany. American glass has had a 
 distinguished originator and forefighter in him. He has had to contend 
 against the tradition in the Episcopal Church of the United States which 
 looks with reverence toward the Church of England, whence it sprang. 
 The prejudices of clergymen and vestrymen are in favor of British glass 
 for windows, notwithstanding its coldness and lack of character. There 
 is no reasoning with a sentiment. It affects our church architecture 
 in general with a sameness and a tameness truly deplorable. 
 
 22 
 
- 
 

CHAPTER III 
 
 FAVRILE GLASS 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
CHAPTER III 
 FAVRILE GLASS 
 
 However, it was not by the way of stained glass windows that 
 Louis C. Tiffany won his widest fame. His protest against certain 
 great American expositions for their neglect of American stained win¬ 
 dows (published in the Forum) was necessary, because the managers 
 of such fairs declined the expense of preparing suitable halls with 
 day and night lighting such as are needed for the proper exhibi¬ 
 tion of stained glass. They are indeed unwieldy objects to exhibit. 
 Not so the small glass objects for the drawing room, the dining table, 
 the boudoir. Ancient glass of Chinese, Venetian, Bohemian, British 
 make has made the circuit of the world. The somewhat mysterious but 
 once very famous myrrhine glassware, under the Caesars, left nothing 
 to be desired in the admiration of classical writers or the sums spent 
 on their purchase by the collectors of the day. 
 
 Tiffany, as we have seen, experimented in various glass furnaces, 
 and finally in his own, upon the colored glass used in draperies and 
 shadows. Much pot-metal of very glorious color could never find a 
 place in windows. Stores of it accumulated; it was evident that an 
 industry pushed so far ought to strive to lower the annual deficit by 
 the utilization of by-products, just like any other. This was one but 
 by no means the only reason for the attention he turned to small 
 glass and the production of a very popular, very varied and beauti¬ 
 ful glass of novel quality which received the title favrile as a name 
 easily spoken and readily recalled, the root being faber. 
 
 25 
 
FAVRILE GLASS 
 
 Favrile is distinguished by certain remarkable shapes and brilliant or 
 deeply toned colors, usually iridescent like the wings of certain 
 American butterflies, the necks of pigeons and peacocks, the wing- 
 covers of various beetles. Its commonest use is for flower vases and 
 table decorations, but it is also employed for plaques on the wall like 
 the decorative glass boards that Clement Massier makes at Golfe 
 Juan, pressing them into low reliefs and charging them with flame- 
 colored glaze. It is employed in mosaic and the tiling of floors 
 and walls and more recently for table services to fill the role usually 
 allotted to chinaware. Toilet boxes, trays, bonbonnieres, vanity, 
 snuff and cigarette boxes, great vases, lamp shades, tea sets, what¬ 
 nots—there is scarcely a field into which favrile has not entered 
 with success. From the first it was popular. Though in the matter 
 of stained glass windows Tiffany had to deplore a preference among 
 the clergy for the cold and dull output of British studios, the appeal 
 made to the people’s love of color was not misunderstood when it 
 came to small objects. 
 
 Such success demonstrated a current in popular taste on which 
 other glass makers were eager to embark, and favrile soon received 
 that mark of honor which is called the sincerest flattery. Bohemian 
 glassware appeared in the American market copying some of the 
 forms and trying to imitate some of the colors of favrile, while 
 appealing to the multitude with low prices. The peacock-feather de¬ 
 sign was a favorite. But the colors were thin and flat when com¬ 
 pared with Tiffany pieces. Better results were obtained in Vienna 
 where one maker, analyzing the ware and following closely Tiffany’s 
 models, produced copies of the original pieces not without success. 
 But he found that the way was long and very difficult. What was 
 needed was a system which would produce as brilliant results cheaply 
 enough to overcome the costs of transportation; the copyist found it 
 too expensive. 
 
 In pursuing his experiments in what is known as favrile the artist 
 
 26 
 


it 
 
FAVRILE GLASS 
 
 was attracted by the effect of colored glass immersed in a solid sea 
 of transparent crystal. The old Venetians used to imprison gold 
 foil, forming therewith figures in the bottom of drinking cups. 
 Figures and pictures caught in glass like flies in amber are not 
 unknown in the past. But here again Tiffany produced something 
 new. For a time he devoted himself to the production of charming 
 little petals, flowers, leaves in glass, which were assembled in 
 proper natural order and then annealed all about with clear glass 
 until gradually a vase was formed, in the solid stem of which or in its 
 broad thick bottom the flowers hung suspended. This style of vase, 
 however, can never become widely used because the extreme difficulty 
 of its construction makes its cost too great. They will soon become 
 rare. Given another artist placed in similar conditions who is in¬ 
 tensely interested in the experiment and can devote the time to it, and 
 similar results may be obtained. 
 
 The development of iridescent colors and all the varied hues and 
 shades in favrile glass calls upon chemical knowledge and makes the 
 production of new combinations a very fascinating occupation. An¬ 
 cient Greek and Roman glass subjected to the disintegrating effects of 
 burial for long periods in a humid soil has produced objects of great 
 attraction to amateurs, some of whom devote themselves to their col¬ 
 lection. Just as modern painters have tried to rival in painting the 
 tones effected by age on old pictures, so in his favrile glass Tiffany 
 has vied with that beauty which has been added to antique glass by 
 the centuries, aided perhaps by the oily contents of such receptacles 
 as were filled with cosmetics and other unguents. His taste in color 
 has found expression in a thousand articles of applied art; these, oc¬ 
 cupying prominent places in households, have exercised a happy 
 influence on the taste of citizens. It is obvious that such influ¬ 
 ences exist and make themselves felt; but that is seldom thought of. 
 Yet the fact that things of daily use like lamps, flower-vases, and 
 toilet articles reach a wider public than do paintings and sculpture 
 
 27 
 
FAVRILE GLASS 
 
 make the “decorative” arts more important to a nation than the “fine” 
 arts. Hence the value to a community of artists who devote their 
 talent to making things of use beautiful. They are educators of 
 the people in the truest sense, not as school masters laying down 
 the law, but as masters of art appealing to the emotions and the 
 senses and rousing enthusiasm for beauty in one’s environment. 
 
 28 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ENAMELS AND JEWELRY 
 

 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ENAMELS AND JEWELRY 
 
 The writer has met several men who made a practice of collecting 
 unset precious and semi-precious stones and carrying about with them 
 a large wallet filled with the choicest specimens of their hoards. One 
 was Henry Ward Beecher. They enjoyed handling these jewels and 
 loved to watch them sparkle in the sunlight as they shifted them 
 from side to side. One can imagine Louis C. Tiffany also doing 
 this. But with him, if he ever did it, the act would have been, not 
 a purposeless one of simple enjoyment in the glow and sparkle of 
 jewels, but a fruitful deed, the first step to the production of some 
 little work of art. 
 
 Stained glass windows and small objects in colored glass led their 
 designer naturally, one may say inevitably, to a synthetic treatment of 
 enamel and precious stones. A painter who is born with a sense for 
 color—and he, strange to say, is not common—must revel in the 
 deep-set richness of hue offered by precious gems and love the tones 
 so lavishly presented by nature in marbles, onyx, malachite, and car- 
 nelian; in various shells; in pearls, opals and coral; in old amber and 
 tortoise shell. Enamels on copper, silver or gold afford an almost 
 inexhaustible variety of background against which these semi-precious 
 materials may stand relieved—not to speak of harder stones like 
 diamond, ruby, sapphire. 
 
 It is not hard to imagine the enjoyment which an artist of Mr. Tiffany’s 
 nature, training, and antecedents obtained from the exercise of his 
 
 31 
 
ENAMELS AND JEWELRY 
 
 faculties and taste in the designing of such rare and beautiful things. 
 In addition to their flower-like colors, to their hues only rivalled by 
 sunsets, rainbows and the northern aurora, these objects have an 
 indestructibility which is very appealing to most men and women. 
 Along with a seeming fragility like that of petals and tendrils of the vine 
 they have a solidity of material and a thoroughness in workmanship 
 which place them in a high rank, considered merely from the crafts¬ 
 man’s viewpoint. Tiffany, one may say without exaggeration, has been 
 the foremost exponent of the arts and crafts in America. And in no 
 point does he better deserve the title of fabrum princeps than in the 
 technical soundness of these pretty pieces. It is not for nothing that 
 he is the son of Charles L. Tiffany. 
 
 The sixth floor of the great building on Fifth Avenue known as 
 Tiffany & Company contains the department of original—that is to 
 say individual and unduplicated—enamels and jewels designed by 
 Louis C. Tiffany. A sketch by the master is taken in hand; often 
 a second water color cartoon is made and from this is built up with 
 wax and various precious materials the model of the coming piece. 
 At various stages in its development the master is consulted. The gold 
 or platinum, the silver or copper framework is made from the wax 
 model by trained craftsmen and craftswomen and the enamels are 
 painted in and fired. Then the materials which will not bear the 
 heat of firing are temporarily put in place for a last revision. When 
 the master is satisfied, the final touches are applied, the jewels or 
 semi-precious materials are solidly joined to their beds and the object, 
 a result of many consultations and many expert hands, is ready for 
 the show-case. 
 
 Not only the favrile glass pieces mentioned in a former chapter 
 but objects like those alluded to above are permanent exhibits in 
 many museums, such as the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London, the Metro¬ 
 politan Museum, New York, the Walters Gallery, Baltimore. Many 
 
 32 
 

 
 
♦ 
 


 
 
ENAMELS AND JEWELRY 
 
 luxurious private houses have Louis C. Tiffany’s enameled objects. 
 His constructions in color for personal jewelry are favorites in a 
 host of households. Owing to the extraordinary collections of all 
 sorts of gems and colored stones amassed by Tiffany & Company, 
 this department has a variety and wealth of materials to choose 
 from, the like of which does not exist in America or in any known 
 land. 
 
 One of the earliest designs for personal jewelry which occurred to 
 Mr. Tiffany is the flower of the wild carrot, called Queen Anne’s 
 Lace. This charming weed is found everywhere. Its unpretending 
 wheel formed of a great number of small white flowers, sometimes 
 of a delicate mauve, will often carry a small dark floweret in the 
 centre of the disk. This wheel is reproduced in white enamel on silver, 
 with a garnet at the centre. A dragon fly for a hat-pin is enameled 
 and set with opals on a platinum base. A marine motif, half crab, 
 half octopus, with the writhing feet split into two or more special ends, 
 is arranged for a brooch and set with opals, sapphires and rubies. 
 This piece is now in the Walters Gallery. A girdle of silver ornamented 
 with enamels, has berries formed of opals. A decoration for the head is 
 a branch of blackberries, the leaves made of filigree of gold and silver, 
 enameled, the berries composed of clusters of dark garnets. Another 
 design is the dandelion full blown with seed, the “four o’clock.” A 
 third is a spray of the little spirea flower. 
 
 Another, likewise now in Baltimore at the Walters Gallery, is the 
 Peacock necklace, the main piece of which is a mosaic of opals, 
 amethysts and sapphires. The less large pieces that adjoin the centre 
 are of enamel on gold repousse work, lighted up with opals and 
 rubies, emeralds being used to relieve the colors. The back of the 
 big centre-piece has a decoration of flamingoes and the lowest point 
 of the pendant below is a single large ruby, selected not for its cost¬ 
 liness but for the exact shade of its red. Objects of this sort make 
 one feel that the artist has studied well the enamels of China and 
 
 33 
 
ENAMELS AND JEWELRY 
 
 Japan without losing sight of those of Byzantium and the Italian 
 Renaissance. Neither color nor design is Oriental, but it is certain 
 that the Orient has had a stimulating effect, as we perceive to have 
 been the case with Whistler and La Farge and many French painters 
 and decorators. Tiffany has taken the best, namely, the spirit of the 
 Oriental craftsmen, without falling so far under their spell as to be¬ 
 come a copyist, and this independence and originality will be found 
 in the form of his works as well as in the designs wrought upon 
 them. 
 
 Among the most exquisite products of the Tiffany enamels are 
 pieces meant to hold flower pots or cut flowers, decorative vases for 
 the drawing room or dining table, trinket-holders for the toilet table, 
 bonbonnieres, etc. Some of these have been reproduced here by a 
 color process to give some idea of their deep and glowing color 
 scheme. Beside these warm and resplendent enamels the tones of 
 old Limoges ware look formal and cold. The designs are commonly 
 flower motifs which recall Mr. Tiffany’s paintings of roses, rhododen¬ 
 drons and paeonies. They reflect the pleasure which the artist takes 
 in color, analogous in music to the notes of the ’cello. Observe the 
 small vase in the illustration which has in repousse relief a number 
 of toadstools in different stages of growth. The artist has succeeded 
 in suggesting the very texture of the fungus. The red and rose 
 tints of the plants and the varied greens of the vase form a sumptuous 
 color scheme and lend to the small object that precious quality which 
 is so difficult to attain. A smaller round pot with decoration of red 
 flowers in relief makes the same impression. A wide mouthed bowl 
 or cup with red flowers deep in the smooth surface, not repousse, is 
 notable for the simple elegance of its shape and the glow of the 
 flower motif. 
 
 Next to the structure of the design is the color scheme in these and 
 a hundred other pieces. Long practice in selecting glass for windows 
 trains an artist to a certainty of eye which makes him instantaneous 
 
 34 
 
- 
 
ENAMELS AND JEWELRY 
 
 in his judgment. He does not require a rule of color adjustment; it 
 is more like an instinct. This allows the master to get through a vast 
 quantity of work in a given time. Mr. Tiffany has his helpers so 
 well trained that he needs to devote but a few hours a day to enamels 
 and jewelry. It is through his study of flowers as a painter interested 
 in nature and his delight in the growing of flowers that he has come 
 to many happy adaptations of flower forms in enamel work and 
 stained glass. Insect life and marine forms have suggested other com¬ 
 binations of lines and masses, hues and shades. He has followed the 
 bidding “reach boldly out and grasp the life about you” as we may 
 paraphrase one of Goethe’s best known verses, and taken advantage 
 of the endless wealth of precept and suggestion that lies around us in 
 air and water and earth, in all the vast, teeming bosom of nature. 
 
 Articles of personal adornment are wont to be rated low throughout 
 the wide field of art in contradistinction to objects of the fine arts. 
 One must not forget, however, that they appeal to the very widest im¬ 
 aginable circle of buyers. Practically all women and most men take 
 an interest of a more or less lively sort in things which they carry 
 about their persons. It is well, therefore, that objects of the sort 
 should be beautiful or at any rate exhibit some taste. One may say 
 that the quality, the artistic quality, of the jewelry which is found 
 among a people goes far to measure that people’s level in art. Hence 
 the importance of having artists instead of untrained artisans to supply 
 jewelers with designs; hence the value to the people of Mr. Tiffany’s 
 efforts to supply a class of jewelry not only original and individual, 
 but often very beautiful. Each piece acts as a little missionary of 
 art and tries in its own dumb way to convert the Philistine. 
 
 35 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 TEXTILES AND HAND STUFFS 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 TEXTILES AND HAND STUFFS 
 
 One of the most interesting things in the study of the arts while tracing 
 their development in the past is to note the action of one art upon 
 another, such as that of sculpture upon painting, of mosaic on stained 
 glass, of basketry on pottery and porcelain. Not only by peculiarities 
 of modeling in ancient and in savage pottery, for example, can one 
 detect that an original must have been a woven object which was copied 
 in clay. Signs of this same ancestry cling to objects of more recent 
 and higher artistic effort such as Chinese, Persian and European pottery 
 and porcelain. There can be little question that a great number of 
 designs owe their origin to textiles, and their wide popularity to the 
 fact that such objects are easily transported. They formed a natural 
 staple in the barter and sale between different nations for that very 
 reason. What seems to have almost escaped notice is, that architec¬ 
 ture itself has been profoundly affected in many parts of the globe by 
 motives taken originally from woven goods. The facades of temples 
 and palaces and communal houses in Yucatan and Guatemala are 
 quite generally carved with decorative designs and figures in relief 
 which suggest a woven textile ancestry. 
 
 The hut made of woven work in reed, bamboo or grass, the 
 tent composed of cloth, of hair, wool, cotton or silk, have left their 
 ineffaceable mark upon the architecture of more than half the peo¬ 
 ples of the earth. Those who are curious in such matters will dis¬ 
 cover hints of a similar origin in Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Gothic 
 
 39 
 
TEXTILES AND HAND STUFFS 
 
 buildings—if not in their structural parts, yet often discernible in 
 minor details. 
 
 It may be, that, next in antiquity to the decoration of the body with 
 paint or tattoo marks came the adornment of the figure with a cloak or 
 blanket, woven to a more or less intricate design, according to the 
 social standing of the wearer. So, among the Kelts of Ireland and 
 Scotland, who in all probability repeated what was common to the 
 Gauls and other Keltic nations in Europe and Asia, the under folk wore 
 garments of a single dull hue; clothing of several shades denoted a rise 
 in social rank, while aristocrats and leaders of strong clans expressed 
 their caste by the presence in the tartan of many colors. Indeed, old 
 Irish texts which have survived lay down the rules which once governed 
 the laws of Ireland and Scotland, rules which must have made it danger¬ 
 ous for men to wear more colors in their kilts and plaids than to their 
 rank the law allowed. Recall Joseph’s “coat of many colors.” The 
 Romans had very definite rules as to the colors of the toga, certain bor¬ 
 ders in color being reserved to Senators. Hints of similar ideas are 
 found early in Greek and Oriental history, as when the historian remarks 
 of some slave, pirate or low-born adventurer, with a disgust he is sure 
 his reader shares, that the person thus characterized assumed the dress 
 of a king, or else he may remark concerning some politic king, that, 
 having taken a city formerly governed as a democracy, the king afore¬ 
 said entered the town without his royal robes in order to win the good¬ 
 will of the conquered. 
 
 “Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; 
 
 Robes and furred gowns hide all.” 
 
 Not the crown alone, but garments of a certain cut and traditional 
 colors were signs of rank. And from Homer down we find Greeks 
 and “barbarians” honoring the statues of their gods by clothing them 
 in the most sumptuous of colored robes. Nations who boasted that 
 
 40 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TEXTILES AND HAND STUFFS 
 
 they never worshipped “stock and stone” none the less used such pro¬ 
 ducts of the loom to express their reverence for the Deity. 
 
 In remote ages it may have been woman who did the weaving, as she 
 appears to have made the pottery for the cruder needs of the prehistoric 
 kitchen. But as far back as records run it is man who appears to have 
 furnished designs and directed the work of loom and kiln whenever 
 the output was intended for some special magnificence or merely for 
 quantity to sell in the general market. Thus, when Moses, alleging 
 commands from on high, urged the Jews to bring him materials to form 
 the tabernacle, we are told that “all the women that were wise-hearted 
 did spin with their hands and brought that which they had spun, both 
 of blue and purple and of scarlet and of fine linen.” But by divine 
 order Moses appointed two men to confect the tabernacle, Bezaleel the 
 son of Uri of the tribe Judah, who was an expert in metalwork and 
 carpentry, and Aholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan, 
 who was an expert in textiles. The vast fame of Egypt for its woven 
 goods explains the presence of artist-artisans of this rank in the Jewish 
 camps. 
 
 “Them hath He filled with the wisdom of the heart to work all man¬ 
 ner of work, of the engraver and of the cunning workman and of the 
 embroiderer in blue and in purple, in scarlet and in fine linen, and of the 
 weaver, even of them that do any work and of those that devise cunning 
 work.” Aholiab is one of the earliest artists in weaving and embroid¬ 
 ery of whom we have record. 
 
 At Troy the fugitive wife of Menelaos is described as “weaving a 
 great purple web of double fold and embroidering thereon many battles 
 of horse-taming Trojans and mail-clad Achaians”; and Andromache 
 hears of her Hector’s death as she is “weaving a double purple web 
 and broidering therein manifold flowers.” Penelope manages to put 
 off the suitors many years by pretending to be engaged on a great 
 funeral cloak for her father-in-law Laertes. 
 
 All these were home industries for family use. We may be sure, 
 
 41 
 
TEXTILES AND HAND STUFFS 
 
 however, that Phoenicians, Pelasgians and early Greeks drove a great 
 trade in textile goods, carpets, hangings and shawls which must have 
 been largely supplied by commercial looms conducted by families of 
 artisans both free and slave. And there is no good reason to doubt 
 that children were employed, just as they are to-day in Asia, to carry on 
 the actual manual drudgery of the loom according to rules and regula¬ 
 tions handed down in families from generation to generation, executing 
 blindly many complicated designs, the origin of which was lost in the 
 mists of the past. At Athens young girls made the peplos offered 
 every four years to Pallas Athene, represented by her ancient statue in 
 wood. But for the hangings in the Parthenon, about the colossal gold 
 and ivory statue by Pheidias, it was Pheidias himself who gave the 
 designs. 
 
 One need not be surprised, then, to find that Louis C. Tiffany has 
 been tempted to make excursions into the field of the loom through the 
 charm of textile work, in order to obtain rugs, carpets and hangings 
 which will express his particular color sense and harmonize with certain 
 given interiors. While he has never set up looms of his own, he has 
 devoted a good deal of time to the dyeing and finishing of textiles 
 woven elsewhere, taking loom works of a neutral shade and giving them 
 art value under his personal superintendence. In this way he has made 
 them vie with paintings for their color charm and greatly surpass paint¬ 
 ings in purely decorative effect. Some exhibit changes of tint as they 
 fall in folds and catch the light; their shadows are full of unexpected 
 colors. On the other hand, the stately and sober-toned rugs and car¬ 
 pets of China, made for broad surfaces and calculated to enhance, not 
 to interfere with, the richer walls and furniture of palaces and temples, 
 have found him sympathetic, so that he has produced carpets of the lar¬ 
 gest size in which the designs are incorporated by stamping the material 
 with patterns carved in wood, which deeply stain the heavy pile of the 
 material in order to effect the designs and color scheme required. 
 
 It is the part of a rounded artist to know when and where the hot 
 
 42 
 
1 
 
TEXTILES AND HAND STUFFS 
 
 and the cool color, the rich and the pale tone should be applied. Tiffany 
 has known how to run the gamut of colors in the most diverse branches 
 of art according to the place the object in question is meant to occupy. 
 
 When one examines the textile objects in exhibitions of the arts and 
 crafts one observes a great timidity among the artisans with regard to 
 color. A similar reliance on neutral tints may be seen in architecture, 
 sculpture, jewelry, pottery, even mosaic; so, one comes to the conclu¬ 
 sion that the public dislikes strong coloration, or, at any rate, that the 
 workmen and workwomen think the public does. The impression one 
 gets is lack of courage, an obscure feeling that color is a danger; and 
 perhaps that feeling is based on a real lack of temperament in public and 
 in workmen which makes them unable to distinguish between deep, 
 strong coloration and gaudiness. Perhaps it springs from a lack of 
 naivete, a presence of self-consciousness which combine to depress and 
 sterilize art. 
 
 Certainly our climate invites to sumptuous colors. 
 
 It is therefore incumbent upon leaders in the arts to counteract this 
 weakness on the part of the public by making people familiar with 
 works full of powerful color and accustoming them to something richer 
 and more virile than the drabs and greys and anaemic color schemes of 
 the past. It is only fair to say that, consciously or unconsciously, Louis 
 C. Tiffany has powerfully helped to educate the public in this respect. 
 
 43 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 A DECORATOR OF 
 
 INTERIORS 
 

CHAPTER VI 
 
 A DECORATOR OF INTERIORS 
 
 As we see by the example of Whistler and his Peacock Room, an 
 artist who has the decorative feeling highly developed is always eager 
 to carry out his ideas in a completely enclosed interior, where nothing 
 shall intrude to mar the effect of the decoration as a whole. It has 
 been Tiffany’s good fortune to enjoy this difficult task on several 
 occasions. To a certain degree it was possible in the case of the 
 crypt in the cathedral of St. John the Divine; in that crypt the chapel 
 niche at any rate, was given over to his artistic ministrations. By the use 
 of mosaic he produced something which was well suited to that style 
 of architecture in accordance with which the edifice was begun. 
 If in the process, the slow process of building the Protestant Cathe¬ 
 dral, the style was changed from Romanesque to Gothic, the latter 
 appears only in the upper structure, in the choir and chapels. It will 
 be impossible at this date to change the crypt and the main masses 
 of the choir to Gothic. Now the Romanesque like the Byzantine 
 style out of which it rose, is remarkable for broad spaces unbroken 
 by windows, and for these spaces of wall the natural adornment is 
 painting, or preferably mosaic. 
 
 Glass and stone mosaic may be said to be the parent of stained 
 glass windows. Although we can find some traces of colored glass 
 for window openings in the first century before Christ, yet it was the 
 Gothic, a thousand years later, that caused it to bloom into a full- 
 grown branch of beauty. Mosaic as it has been handled in Rome 
 
 47 
 
A DECORATOR OF INTERIORS 
 
 for the copying of famous paintings during recent centuries is a 
 mechanical affair, meant to insure permanency and easily justified by 
 the certainty that the originals are doomed to a gradual decay. There 
 is no art in such preservative measures. It is different with mosaics 
 as they were employed from the fifth to the ninth century under the 
 later Roman and Byzantine emperors, such mosaics as we see 
 surviving at Ravenna and Rome, and, occasionally, in the shape of 
 mosaic pavements, in different parts of Europe and northern Africa. 
 In such cases we meet them as durable substitutes for wall paintings 
 and carpets, not copies of such things but objects of an independent 
 art. 
 
 In mosaics, almost as much as in stained glass windows, there is 
 necessary to their eminence a feeling for rich color which must be 
 innate since it cannot be acquired. The sense must be delicate also, 
 because it depends on the surroundings and the light, whether 
 brilliant colors or dull, whether simple designs or complicated shall 
 be employed. When a mosaic floor is unearthed on the site of a 
 Roman temple or villa we have no means of determining under what 
 conditions as to lighting the artist carried out his task. We have 
 the same difficulty, but perhaps to a less degree, with ancient 
 sculpture and architecture. We must try to imagine what effect they 
 had when entire, when clothed with colors, for both temple and 
 statue were painted, while the effigies of gods and goddesses were 
 often decked out with robes and ornamented with crowns, fillets, 
 earrings and chains of gold. A very false idea of classic art grew up 
 during the Renaissance period and persisted until the latter part of the 
 nineteenth century, an idea that it was cold from lack of color. 
 An artist who would like to employ the richest materials in archi¬ 
 tecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts finds even now 
 the mistakes made in former centuries concerning ancient art hard 
 to combat. 
 
 The Chapel of the Crypt was shown at the World’s Columbian Ex- 
 
 48 
 


 
 
 
 

A DECORATOR OF INTERIORS 
 
 position in 1893 and was bought by Mrs. Celia H. Wallace of Chicago 
 who gave it to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York 
 at a time when the crypt was the only portion of the edifice where 
 services could be held. Since then the choir has been built and tempo¬ 
 rarily enclosed. It has been calculated by those interested in such 
 statistics that well-nigh a million pieces of glass mosaic, in which opal¬ 
 escent glass predominates, besides pearls and semi-precious stones, 
 go to make up the several parts of the niche. The altar is of white 
 marble enriched with mosaic, the emblems of the four Evangelists 
 being composed of pearl and semi-precious stones. There is on the 
 retable an inscription in mosaic referring to the eucharist. The 
 tabernacle has a door of filigree metal similarly enriched. For the 
 reredos iridescent glass mosaic has been used, the design being a 
 vine and a peacock, a bird which is found in late Roman and 
 therefore Christian churches, notwithstanding its bad repute as the 
 bird of Juno and the emblem of vanity. It was in truth a bird be¬ 
 loved of the nations about the Mediterranean, who imported it from 
 India. The early peoples held it in high esteem because it seemed to 
 symbolize the sun with its wheel of brilliant, eyed feathers, and did in 
 fact commend itself to the Hindus for two services it rendered: 
 because it hailed the coming of the rains and because its clamor 
 notified them of the presence of the dangerous big cats, the tiger 
 and the leopard. 
 
 A series of arches, with ornaments in relief overlaid with gold 
 and set with jewel-like glass, represents the ciborium. The arches 
 are supported upon mosaic-incrusted columns. There are inscriptions 
 of inlaid mosaics on the five steps which form the approach to the 
 predella and three more which bring one to the altar. The numbers 
 are symbolical. The upper three signify the Trinity, the lower the 
 five wounds of Christ. In the crypt, lighted by pendent lamps, this 
 altar and its approaches establish a brilliant centre before the eyes 
 of the worshipers. 
 
 49 
 
A DECORATOR OF INTERIORS 
 
 The Millbank or Anderson house on Thirty-Eighth Street, Manhattan, 
 also the home of the late H. O. Havemeyer, not to speak of Mr. 
 Tiffany’s apartments in the Bella, his two homes on Long Island, and 
 his house at Madison Avenue and Seventy-Second Street, Manhattan, 
 to be mentioned later, are full of mosaic work on a greater or less 
 scale. The largest single and complete work in mosaic, however, 
 which has issued from the Tiffany Studios is a great solid fire-curtain 
 for the opera house in the City of Mexico into the making of which 
 a vast quantity of colored glass cubes has entered. 
 
 This fire-curtain is like a thick wall which separates the stage from 
 the auditorium until the play begins. It is meant to move up and 
 down as a single mass. A visitor to the opera house will see, blocking 
 the stage, a vast window intersected by square mullions, beyond 
 which a magical landscape unfolds itself. In the front are flowers 
 and bushes. Then come lakes and pastures with foothills, gradually 
 taking the eye upward to a mountain-range. Higher still lie the 
 everlasting snows of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the extinct volcanoes 
 that look down upon the valley of the City of Mexico. Above these 
 the clouds of sunset are tinged with red and gold. 
 
 This largest of landscapes is not treated like a panorama where 
 the foreground is occupied by actual objects in the round, followed 
 by some in relief, so that the picture gradually rises from things 
 actual until in the canvas it becomes mere painted illusion. Tiepolo 
 has made ceilings after this fashion. It is color wrought in mosaic from 
 top to bottom. Very skillfully indeed is the illusion of an actual vista 
 seen through a great window kept up. What adds to the interest is 
 the illumination. By playing over its surface such colored lights 
 as are usually part of a well equipped theatre, the most delightful 
 variations in the picture are obtained. The illusion of a great window 
 is complete. Here we have a luxury unknown to the opera and 
 playgoers of London, Paris and New York. As soon as the Mexican 
 audiences take their seats, perhaps before the orchestra begins to play, 
 
 50 
 

 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 >V\ -v . 
 
 ’ ' ; 
 
 \ ~J . „ *•>. 
 
 Jl 
 
 14** JXlMMi 
 
 
 
 Wr 
 
 
 * P*3kl ' 
 
A DECORATOR OF INTERIORS 
 
 they are offered a pleasure for the eyes most unusual and varied. 
 And this should be noted more particularly: aside from the beauty of 
 the picture presented the curtain is conspicuous as an example of 
 decorative art or art applied to things of use. For it acts as a preventive 
 to fire spreading either way, from the stage to the body of the house, or 
 vice versa. It is odd that storm-tossed Mexico should be the first to 
 possess such a colossal bit of luxury in applied art, but the order was 
 given while Porfirio Diaz was still President and men little guessed how 
 soon and suddenly his benevolent tyranny was to end. 
 
 To revert to comprehensive schemes of decoration: About 1884 
 the Lyceum Theatre was built on Fourth Avenue where now stands 
 the enormous pile of the Metropolitan Life Building. Many may 
 recall the lively air of this theatre within; it was decorated by Louis 
 C. Tiffany whose ateliers for stained glass and mosaic, etc., were 
 at that time, across the avenue, one street to the north. The scheme of 
 decoration was a novelty and may be said to have ushered in those 
 striking changes in auditoriums of New York theatres from bare¬ 
 ness, or tawdry sumptuousness, as the case might be, to the rich and 
 cozy interiors we now meet with in more than one playhouse. The 
 color scheme, the materials used, and the lighting of the Lyceum were 
 altogether different from anything we had had before. The Veterans’ 
 Room in the Seventh Regiment Armory was also Mr. Tiffany’s creation. 
 In this room the ceiling was enriched by the profuse decoration of its 
 deep beams; the walls and fireplace were freely adorned with mosaic 
 and metal, and from the ceiling large designs in forged iron were 
 hung, resulting in a harmony and richness of effect rarely attained in 
 interior decoration. 
 
 51 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 

CHAPTER VII 
 A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 An artist who began at an early period in his active career to con¬ 
 sider the decoration of interiors would naturally turn his thoughts to the 
 making of a material home different from any that can be leased; all 
 the more so, if he were a married man with a family. Mr. Tiffany did 
 arrange a home in New York when his children were very young and 
 made it an original and beautiful abode—but that was only the first of 
 four homes he has successively fashioned, two in the city, two in the 
 country. 
 
 For the first town home he took the top story of a New York apart¬ 
 ment house, the Bella, and transformed it into a charming dwelling. As 
 you entered from the lift you found yourself in a lobby, lighted with 
 stained glass, which reached high up into the peak of the gable where 
 the beams themselves showed in a rich dull color-scheme lighted here 
 and there with plates and studs of bronze, the broad surfaces of the beams 
 showing the knots and grain of the wood. The roof-slopes were set with 
 thick glass tiles to aid the light from windows, and the windows them¬ 
 selves were made up of rounds of glass of uneven thickness. What with 
 staining and carving and inlays of metal and glass, the dark, brown- 
 beamed ceiling made a foil to the warm India-red walls and trim. A 
 novel effect in the treatment of window sashes was to be seen in the 
 gable of this lobby. The stained-glass sash was heavy and to raise it 
 there was need of a strong pulley. Mr. Tiffany used a large wooden 
 wheel and chain and exposed these to view, turning them in fact into 
 
 55 
 
A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 decorative objects by simply providing a handsome wheel and chain. 
 It would have been a pity indeed to box-in such objects after the ordi¬ 
 nary fashion. The counter weight, a shallow box playing up and down 
 a groove to one side of the window, was turned likewise into a thing of 
 beauty. Not far off a standing torch-bearer with a hood suspended 
 above it gave at night the pleasant effect of a moving flame. The hall 
 adjacent, with its tall clock and metal-bound cassone , its carved settle 
 and shelves set with spoils from Algiers, its hanging lamps and quaint 
 Oriental keramics stamped the entrance to this apartment with the seal 
 of the artist. 
 
 The dining-room gave a chance for many ingenious arrangements for 
 the display of platters, plates and cups which were nicely calculated as 
 to their effect upon the general color-scheme of the walls. About three 
 feet from the floor ran a rack about the room to carry the larger plates, 
 and on both sides of the tiled fireplace, as well as above it, were 
 shelves and nooks and wall-closets for the more delicate ware, the 
 silver, etc. The upper walls were hung with blue Japanese textile work 
 embroidered with birds and cloud symbols. The tiled fireplace with 
 its dogs and blazing logs was framed by a wooden hearth-front and 
 mantel of the eighteenth century, carved in low relief with fan-shaped 
 patterns. Above, against the wall, was a painting of pumpkins and 
 half-stripped corn and a turkey-cock “making his wheel,” but this 
 painting was not set in a projecting frame, merely held in place by 
 strips of brown wood. The brilliant yellow of the pumpkins and the 
 red and iridescent blues of the turkey made this painting a focus of 
 color for the manifold and varied notes which sprang from every part 
 of the room, lined as it was with Oriental keramics and textiles, brass 
 and bronze, silver and dull gold. 
 
 In the library he treated the fireplace in a novel manner, using the 
 whole width of the chimney breast for shelving for books and bric-a- 
 brac and forming out of iron plates an advanced hearth for wood fires 
 without disturbing the hearth behind. It was a hearth before and 
 
 56 
 

 
 
 
 
A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 concealing the hearth of the apartment which he had transfigured in so 
 many other ways. The combination of books and open fireplace was 
 an idea which commends itself to book-lovers, for on those shelves are 
 places for favorite authors and, high above easy reach, shelves for 
 particularly admired bric-a-brac. Wherever not covered by the books, 
 the walls were clad with Chinese matting touched up here and there 
 with suggestions of flower and leaf. The iron plates of the hearth 
 and the metal doors of an adjoining wood-closet were decorated with 
 discreet figures in rust-color and black, not painted so much as sug¬ 
 gested, like the decorations on old metal pieces which have been toned 
 down and almost obliterated by age. 
 
 It was by such methods that Mr. Tiffany began his home-making, 
 having for a basis the topmost story of a New York apartment house. 
 The late Donald G. Mitchell [Ik Marvel] made this apartment the text 
 for a number of pages on interior decoration in “Our Continent” some 
 thirty years ago, in which he noted the cleverness the artist showed in 
 welding together into one harmonious whole the decorative art of the 
 west and the east. 
 
 Walking up Madison Avenue one comes to a large building on the 
 west side of the avenue on the northern corner of Seventy-Second Street. 
 Its roof-line tells one that an artist who demands a north light for his 
 studio dwells there. The upper floors of this building form the second 
 home Mr. Tiffany made for himself in the city. Following in the 
 lines of architecture first laid down by the late H. H. Richardson in 
 the United States, the firm of McKim, Mead & White designed the 
 structure in the modern Romanesque style which Richardson fathered. 
 The massive arched entrance with its iron grille for a gate is powerful 
 enough to support the tall superstructure in which the architects have 
 employed a pleasant scheme of loggias and balconies to relieve the 
 facade. The whole is capped with a grand slope of roof neither too 
 large nor too meagre for the mass of the building. It is an apartment 
 house, but ingeniously arranged to give variety of interior to the several 
 
 57 
 
A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 suites. They are served by a stair and an elevator running from one 
 side of the wide, arched porte coch'ere. 
 
 While the structure is due to the designs of McKim, Mead & White 
 the roof with its two stories superimposed has been designed by Mr. 
 Tiffany. The harsh lines of iron roof-tree and rafters were overcome by 
 the use of concrete and plaster, and the interior, of the upper or studio 
 floor especially, suggested at the time the curved and rounded outlines 
 one associates with Fart nouveau; but that was before reaction against 
 formal, plumb lines was felt in this country. All the flues for chimneys 
 belonging to the various apartments had to find their exit through 
 the artist’s studio in the roof. To meet this difficulty, for the most 
 part they were assembled in the centre of the studio, and the stack to 
 which they converged was made one of the chief decorative features of 
 the interior. With brick and concrete this stack was modeled into a 
 shaft as easy of line as the bole of a great tree. On four sides fireplaces 
 were hollowed out so that the wide and lofty studio—almost as wide as 
 the area of the building, high as the peak of the roof permitted—is 
 lighted up at night in every direction by smouldering log fires. A loft 
 above the main entrance to the studio gives variety to the upper part 
 and allows the placing of an organ which is played from a seat on the 
 lower studio floor. 
 
 Mr. Tiffany’s amusement in shaping the first home from an apartment 
 of the ordinary type was greatly enhanced when it came to the wide 
 spaces and several stories at his disposal in this new problem. If in 
 the former case he was able to introduce a number of space-saving 
 inventions and turn the barren waste of a flat, one surprise after another, 
 into an interior crammed with unexpected nooks and corners, in the 
 latter he has shown that he might have made his mark as a decorator on 
 a grand scale. 
 
 As one enters the studio the vestibule is like a bit from the palace of 
 an Indian Rajah. Beams and trim are carved wood from Hindustan 
 and the wall supports a trophy of curious Indian weapons. Entering 
 
 58 
 

A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 thence the lofty high-peaked studio, one sees lamps of Japanese bronze 
 and unique favrile glass suspended from on high, each adding a new 
 note of color or quaint shape. Great windows of dull greenish-yellow 
 glass in the sloping roof give a general tone by daylight. From a 
 southerly window below the eaves one catches a glimpse of Central 
 Park to the westward. The organ loft is full of growing flowers and 
 big Oriental vases. Colored tiles and the cinnabar red so much loved 
 by the Japanese, iridescent glass and shelves full of keramics in subdued 
 tones meet the eye in every direction. Add to all these objects the 
 flowers here, there and everywhere—it is impossible to guess from 
 the illustrations what effects are obtained in the way of color. 
 
 At night the glow from the hearths round the central stack lights up 
 the brightest of the vases and bowls and plaques, gleams with dull rich 
 notes on copper and bronze and throws broad spaces of the irregular 
 apartment into deep shadow. The suspended lamps of many shades 
 of red, rose, yellow and creamy white are foiled against the blackness 
 of the high roof-ceiling. If at that moment a skilled hand touches the 
 keys of the organ the great studio merges into fairy-land; and one would 
 not be surprised to see a Persian prince of the Thousand and One 
 Nights alight from his enchanted steed out of the great poetic past. 
 
 The main or lower story has for its chief apartments the great ball¬ 
 room, the dining- and the breakfast-room. The last named looks east¬ 
 ward as befits the room for the morning’s meal and is in light tones with 
 windows filled with glass that simulates flowers and twining plants. A 
 bay window looking southward down Madison Avenue has the jambs 
 and divisions of the casements decorated with Japanese sword-guards, 
 part of the great collection of those charming little art-works which Mr. 
 Tiffany accumulated years ago before it became a fashion so to do. The 
 drawing-room or ball-room has wall-cases on each side of the broad 
 hearth containing rare Oriental porcelains and specimens of the rich 
 pieces in favrile glass which have spread Mr. Tiffany’s name about the 
 world. But this large apartment is not so full of curious art-works as 
 
 59 
 
A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 the studio. There is, however, a niche treated in Persian fashion, at the 
 back of which is a glass mosaic with floral design and a composition of 
 peacocks which by itself surpasses in richness of tones any single other 
 ornament of the home. 
 
 The dining-room is in its decoration the quietest of all. A great 
 massive table, sideboards with display of silver, a wide hearth rather 
 severely treated, a mantel filled with objects of art and, above, a colored 
 plaster-cast relief by Theodore Bauer of New York. This room is to the 
 westward and is lighted from the south. It is also the darkest room in 
 the house, being used for the most part at night. The drawing-room, 
 from its generous floor space and high ceiling and from its central 
 position between dining- and breakfast-rooms, with a lobby running 
 parallel to the north, makes an ideal salon for balls and receptions, 
 since the apartments indicated, being on three sides of it, afford the best 
 possible arrangement for the circulation of crowds without disturbing 
 the dancers in the big apartment. Those who have experienced the 
 difficulty in managing a host of guests in New York houses of no mean 
 dimensions will understand the practical importance of such a plan. 
 Add to this the “easement” obtained by access to the studio floor along 
 broad and easy flights of stairs and still another way of access between 
 the studio floor and the breakfast-room by other stairs, and it will be 
 seen that everything has been done tomake entertaining easy and effective. 
 
 What is particularly noticeable in this home is the fact that the great 
 number of beautiful objects it contains has not, as we often find to be 
 the case, taken from it the home-like quality. New York has houses 
 which are no more, no less than museums, because the collections of 
 antiques and other objects of art are so obtrusive that all feeling of the 
 home has fled. In some way or other Mr. Tiffany has filled the house 
 with beautiful things and yet retained the home. How he has managed it 
 is his own secret. Perhaps like Topsy it “just growed”. Loving the 
 objects for their own sakes, he has added one to the other because he 
 could not bear to exile any, and his fine taste avoided the error of so 
 
 60 
 

 
 \ 
 
 
 
 

A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 placing them that they interfere with the ease of living among them. 
 Should one attempt to mention them all, or a major part, this book 
 would become a catalogue which no one would care to read. 
 
 As in his city houses, so in his country houses. Mr. Tiffany made a 
 home at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, before he bought and 
 completed “ Laurelton Hall.” The house called “The Briars” still stands 
 embowered in woods to the southward not very far away, where from 
 its cupola one gets glimpses of the Harbor and Oyster Bay and Long 
 Island Sound. The north shore of Long Island is hilly and notwith¬ 
 standing a sandy soil enjoys a climate well adapted to all kinds of trees 
 of the hardy sort and to laurel and rhododendron, vines and flowers. 
 Owing to the ocean to the south and the Sound to the north the winter 
 is not so rigorous as it is inland, while in summer an almost tropical heat 
 added to the moisture in the air makes everything from corn to cactus 
 grow luxuriantly. The adjacent waters, made famous early in the last 
 century by the novels of Fenimore Cooper, are the favorite haunts of 
 yachtsmen and used once to be the home of myriads of water-fowl 
 until relentless shooting drove them away. It was here that Mr. Tiffany 
 decided to pitch his summer camp back from the water among the 
 farms and woods where he could sketch and paint and grow flowers 
 and fruit undisturbed by near neighbors—yet within thirty miles of his 
 work in the city. 
 
 But here too he found that there were limits set to his craving for 
 larger spaces in the house and lands. To the northward, running down 
 to the almost land-locked waters of Cold Spring Harbor, was a property 
 which had been once used as a popular summer-resort for people who 
 came by wheel, steamer and sail-boat to bathe and fish and camp and 
 pic-nic there during the hot months. This property he bought, and 
 began at once making roads and planting trees and laying the plans for 
 a spacious country house with esplanade and look-out tower, palm house 
 and greenhouses, stables for horses, and barns for cows, everything in 
 short that goes to make a country place fitted to be lived in the whole 
 
 61 
 
A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 year round. And as it was in the town studio-home, so it befell with 
 Laurelton Hall: the larger country home partook of his peculiar tem¬ 
 perament and became a dwelling entirely different from any other in 
 the land. Instead of being the expression of the idea of an architect, 
 or that of architect and owner combined, a mixture of two individualities, 
 a blend of two tastes, it is from first to last the house of Louis C. Tiffany 
 and of no one else beyond his immediate family circle. Here, as his 
 daughters married, they have built their summer nests on land given 
 them by him for the purpose not far from Laurelton Hall, so that he 
 has about him the new generation growing up. 
 
 In order to foresee the future and realize beforehand what he meant 
 to do in and about Laurelton Hall he took the trouble to lay out a 
 complete plan of the property in modeling-clay and wax, indicating 
 according to scale the hills and valleys, the clear spaces and woods, the 
 ponds and running waters, the mansion and its appurtenances, the 
 stables and cow barns, the gates and docks. This was an application of 
 his careful modeling and his sense for color to a new branch of art 
 which we may follow up in the succeeding chapter. 
 
 Approaching by the drive, the whereabouts of the Hall is indicated by 
 a clock tower that rises above the trees; but it is not till later that the 
 main body of the building springs to view. There is something in the 
 design of the house analogous to the lower or office story and the piano 
 nobile of Italian houses. From the carriage drive one enters the house on 
 the lower level of one wing and ascends thence to the main floor; but this 
 floor is nearly on a level with the ground in front of the house. Here 
 gravel walks, flowering bushes, a pool of water, watched over by 
 an immense Japanese bronze dragon, occupy the space on the inland 
 side where the tall clock-tower can be seen from finial to base. 
 Entering from this garden of flowers, aquatic plants and fragrant bushes, 
 one comes upon the central apartment, which has also running water, 
 while through its farther windows one can see the blue stretches of Cold 
 Spring Harbor. The tiled pool that freshens this middle room [simi- 
 
 62 
 
A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 lar to the central hall of a country house] gets its water from a glass 
 jar of wonderful color shaped like the slenderest of Greek amphorae. 
 This rises from the middle of the pool. The water bubbling over the 
 slender jar gains a tint from glass and sunlight combined which can not 
 be described by words. In position it is the centre of the house and in 
 fact may be termed the most beautiful object among the many there. 
 Strange to say, this glass vase changes in color, varies not merely some¬ 
 what in accordance with the position of the sun in its fainter shades, 
 but changes during the longer lapse of time as if through some action of 
 the constant running of the water over the glass. The vase, it seems, has 
 a term of life. After a while the clear, pure transparency of the walls 
 is dimmed and the glass is attacked by some corroding force—oxidation 
 through iron in the water or disintegration through radio-activity in the 
 liquid envelope—and the result is a change of tone which can be likened 
 to nothing else. So ethereal, so exquisite is it that one seeks in vain for a 
 simile. Unfortunately these conditions do not last indefinitely; the time 
 comes when the once transparent and then wonderfully colored vase 
 reaches the end of its career—cracks, shivers, explodes. 
 
 Perhaps we have something parallel here to the effects produced on 
 ancient glass by burial underground for centuries, in consequence of 
 which old crocks and tear-vials and potsherds buried several thousand 
 years ago have accumulated inside their rough skins a wealth of color 
 that vies with fire-opals, rainbows and the streamers of the northern 
 aurora. 
 
 It is highly characteristic that Mr. Tiffany should be the one to dis¬ 
 cover this curious effect of running water on glass in the heart of his 
 splendid country house. For who could appreciate better these fine 
 shades of color, delicate as moonlight on dewy cobwebs, than the man 
 who has fixed in favrile glass so many evanescent hues? 
 
 The music-room to the eastward, the large airy dining-room to the 
 westward, and, farther on, but on a lower level, the palm-house with its 
 vault of glass and the greenhouses, all these form a series of apartments, 
 
 63 
 
A BUILDER OF HOMES 
 
 each different from the other, each a surprise. From the outside the 
 house does not look to warrant so much inner space. Toward the 
 Harbor there are smaller rooms, tea-rooms, cozy-rooms and through 
 the French windows one steps out upon an esplanade where masses of 
 flowers are in bloom in the open air. The portrait frontispiece by 
 Sorolla gives an idea of this. For the rest a series of admirable photo¬ 
 graphs reproduced here in black and white must aid the reader to 
 conjure up some of the many, many charms of Laurelton Hall. 
 
 64 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 AS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
 
 Landscape architecture is a comparatively modem word representing 
 a modern idea. Although the Persian monarchs had their “paradises,” 
 as we know through Greek writers such as Xenophon and Diodorus, 
 enclosed pieces of land of varied surface, yet a paradise was rather 
 what we would term a park for game, or Tiergarten on a large scale, 
 with hunting lodge or palaces in it. We do not learn that the area was 
 arranged with art, although something must have been done to change 
 the wild land; perhaps roads were carried here and there and terraces 
 built for the emplacement of residences. Doubtless the temenos or tabu- 
 land about temples in Greece, Asia Minor and Italy received some care 
 in the way of walls to mark the boundaries of the sacred spot; trees and 
 bushes were planted for sightliness and woods felled to obtain views of 
 the temple. It was not, however, until the Italian Renaissance, that we 
 get a definite suggestion of landscape gardening or landscape architec¬ 
 ture in connection with houses in the country, and even then strictly in 
 subordination to the buildings it served and improved. 
 
 Chiefly through French and British masters the art of making a land¬ 
 scape has developed during recent centuries into an independent 
 profession; nowadays we have enough professors of the art to warrant 
 them in forming clubs and societies among themselves. There is one 
 in New York, another in Boston; perhaps in other American cities like 
 associations have been made. These men and women—for the art is 
 
 67 
 
AS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
 
 now practised by women also—are more or less at the mercy of the 
 architects, who are apt to hark back to the old days and insist that the 
 surroundings of a new building shall partake of the nature of a formal 
 or Italian garden, rather than offer such cautious modifications of the 
 natural conditions of the land as the landscape architect might prefer, if 
 left to his own predilections. 
 
 The landscape architect, or “engineer” as he sometimes calls himself, 
 should be an artist in the highest sense of the word. It is well with him 
 if he has been a painter of landscape in early life, and learned to study 
 and report the world about him in detail before attempting to mold and 
 model on a grand scale, using hill and dale, woods and plains, roads and 
 water-courses, lakes and rocks in such a way that he finally works out 
 the picture his imagination has conceived, a picture that may take years 
 to finish. We have on Manhattan, New York, an example in Central 
 Park. Here did Olmsted and Vaux with consummate art fashion from 
 the most unpromising materials a pleasure ground for the dwellers in a 
 city which had been laid out with as little regard for the needs of the 
 future as possible. And ever since this park was started attempts have 
 been made again and again to pervert it from its original purpose and 
 destroy its calm and restfulness, its picturesque and varied parts, by the 
 erection of buildings of one kind or another. Landscape modeling is 
 the art which may be termed the most refined sport for princes and 
 kings. It is the most difficult for democracies, because the best plans 
 are liable to be thwarted through the ignorance of superficial legislators 
 and the knavery of place-holders scenting a job. Citizens have to be 
 forever on the alert, or else, upon one pretext or another, the park will be 
 wrested from them by men who swear and perhaps believe that they 
 have only the good of the community at heart. 
 
 For his experiments in landscape architecture on Long Island Mr. 
 Tiffany had the advantage of his training as a painter. In his early 
 apartment dwelling, the “Bella,” his love of flowers displayed itself and 
 still more in his later studio-residence. Landscape painting gave him 
 
 68 
 

 
 
 
 
 
AS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
 
 the opportunity to study nature on a broader canvas, so that, when he 
 arranged his first country residence, The Briars, there was little need of 
 the professional landscape architect. After that comparatively limited 
 experience he approached the problem of the land about Laurelton Hall 
 with a confidence born of knowledge. He was ready to decide upon 
 what objects it were best to show, what conceal, how these trees would 
 look when grown, how yonder hedge would perform in time its purpose 
 as a screen or as a background for flowers, or where the massed laurels 
 and rhododendrons would best light up the woodland paths in mid¬ 
 summer. Evergreens and deciduous trees, oak and hickory, silver birch 
 and locust, the stately tulip tree and straggling dogwood, cedar, beech 
 and maple, wood laurel and “swamp honeysuckle”—each must con¬ 
 tribute its note of dull or brilliant color and spread its bulk in the desired 
 spot. The sport of the landscape architect never flags, for he plans ever 
 forward, and, even when the needful time is granted, the best of plans of 
 mice and men “gang aft agley.” Diseased trees, like the chestnuts 
 which have been devastated during recent years by a mysterious bark 
 beetle, have to be doctored or felled. The tent caterpillar and gipsy 
 moth must be combatted and sometimes a storm or a forest fire plays 
 havoc with the carefully calculated scene. 
 
 Since the building of the greenhouses at Laurelton Hall Mr.Tiffanyhas 
 had at his disposal in spring a mass of flowering plants with which to paint 
 in living pigments the house itself and its surroundings, the esplanade 
 and porches, the flower beds and pools. Besides the grand background 
 of the Harbor against which the Hall is projected when seen from 
 many vantage points, he has utilized springs in the land above to supply 
 the pond over which the great bronze dragon broods. Water in larger 
 or smaller sheets is so efficient a factor in landscape architecture that 
 one feels its absence as a loss scarcely to be tolerated. The remoteness 
 of the lakes and pools in the gardens of Versailles from Versailles palace 
 is a detriment; their proximity at Fontainebleau is an asset in the beauty 
 of the smaller royal abode. Cascades and chateaux d’eau at a distance 
 
 69 
 
AS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
 
 can not make up for a body of water in which buildings may be re¬ 
 flected. That is why moated granges with the old moats full of water, 
 that is why Venice, Amsterdam, and Stockholm call you back to look 
 on them again, why the Seine after all seems to make Paris, and the 
 Thames redeem London. Laurelton Hall has no water spaces close 
 enough to allow of reflections of its tower, but possesses running water 
 which feeds the ponds and fountains and adds its pleasant murmur to 
 the charming house fountain in the central drawing-room. 
 
 Professional landscape architects are sure to lean either toward the 
 formal garden which derives its ancestry from Italy or the “natural” 
 garden which came into favor in Great Britain during the later 
 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A type is the well-known 
 English Garden at Munich. This tendency has been pushed during 
 the past century to the point of calling certain gardens, or parts of 
 parks, a wild garden, in which the least possible interference is taken 
 with rocks, grassy spots, trees and bushes as they are. When the wilder¬ 
 ness is not sufficient an artificial wilderness is cleverly simulated. 
 
 Of the two camps thus formed Mr. Tiffany would be sure to give his 
 suffrage to the latter, except that in the immediate vicinity of the Hall 
 he has conceded to formalism that which is necessary to make the 
 proper transition from nature to art. But even here he has not intro¬ 
 duced the common device of geometrical flower-beds and hedges 
 clipped into designs suggestive of architecture. In another chapter 
 there was mention of the textile origin of designs for solid stone and 
 brick buildings. To these may be added designs for flower-beds of a 
 highly formal pattern which have received the name of “carpet” beds; 
 and very correctly was the term applied, since the inspiration for their 
 outlines and color masses came from Oriental works of the loom. Mr. 
 Tiffany’s idea has been, to so arrange the environage of Laurelton Hall 
 that a very short walk carries one into the woods where it is possible to 
 forget the existence of houses, streets, and roads in the presence of 
 nature unassisted by the architect. He has directed the approaches by 
 
 70 
 
AS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
 
 the drive through the woods to the westward in such a way that one 
 gets glimpses of the Hall from time to time only to lose them again, 
 very much as the main driveway to the south of the Hall does not yield 
 a sight of the building until one is close upon it. From Cold Spring 
 Harbor, however, the tower and main building, the esplanade and 
 greenhouses are clearly defined against the mass of many shaded ver¬ 
 dure and form indeed the most noticeable feature of the shorescape for 
 those who enter that deep bay from the Sound. 
 
 Owing, it may be, to the fact that a large number of our architects 
 have studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, the formal garden has 
 gained great vogue in the United States where formerly the influence of 
 Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted and his son of the same name, 
 of Vaux, N. F. Barrett and other landscape architects by profession 
 was exerted the other way, in the direction of the natural. It is not 
 surprising that Mr. Tiffany, with his taste for the picturesque and his 
 leaning toward painting rather than sculpture, toward color rather than 
 form, should instinctively avoid the classical or formal and prefer the 
 romantic or natural. Owing to the errors made regarding true classical 
 architecture and sculpture from the Renaissance down to compara¬ 
 tively recent times, say 1850, the idea of color was almost eliminated 
 from anything “classic.” People did not realize that, in the high tide 
 of Greek art, colors were used as lavishly as in modern Japan. Hence 
 the growth of the cold and formal styles from whose ascendancy we are 
 still suffering. Mr. Tiffany has been one of the most efficient among 
 modern combatants on the side of those who have been trying to restore 
 the balance in art and permit poor color-starved humanity to enjoy its 
 birthright of splendid color. The late William Morris Hunt once 
 made a protest against the oppressive reign of so-called classicism in 
 architecture when he built an iron office structure on Broadway, 
 designed the faqade in a Moorish style and then used color lavishly to 
 stamp the novelty with his vehement protest. Either because he could 
 not give real richness to his innovation, owing to the ungrateful ground 
 
 71 
 
AS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
 
 upon which the color had to be applied or because the public was not 
 ready for so startling a thing, the effort did not succeed. This front 
 was soon repainted in apologetic, neutral tones and the protest failed. 
 The energies of Mr. Tiffany, directed toward landscape architecture, like 
 those he employed for other things, such as the making of rare glazes 
 for pottery, have been exerted in so unobtrusive a way that results may 
 have been readily overlooked even by his own family. A visit to Laurel- 
 ton Hall with a thought to what the property once was and what it is 
 now will be distinctly worth while. 
 
 72 
 

 
 
 AFTERWORD 
 
 
 
 
 
 
AFTERWORD 
 
 In the preceding pages, should they be thought worthy of a careful 
 reading, it may be remarked that the words color, color-sense, color¬ 
 feeling often recur. The value attributed to color has been denied 
 by theorists who have started from an untenable assumption that there 
 is a purity, there is a moral worth attached to absence of color, in 
 opposition to sensuousness and luxury in a bad sense attached to its 
 presence. This is a convenient theory for a vast majority of artists who 
 are born without the peculiar eyes and senses that distinguish values 
 and respond with sympathy to the vibrations of light. 
 
 Persian textiles, Japanese water colors, Chinese porcelain, Venetian 
 paintings, the works of Rembrandt and Velasquez can be forced into 
 appeals to sensuousness and luxuriousness only by a twist in the mean¬ 
 ing of words which may satisfy the narrow-minded and the bigot. 
 Some painters do make their mark without having this characteristic to 
 any great extent, although it would appear from the nature of things 
 that it ought to be the painter’s strongest trait. Now Louis C. Tiffany 
 belongs to the painters who can be embraced under the broad term of 
 colorists; hence the frequent appearance of these words. 
 
 The United States have had more than their share of painters who 
 come under the head of colorists, as, for instance in colony times, 
 Gilbert Stuart and Malbone, and later on, Henry Peters Gray, George 
 Inness, George Fuller and Whistler, John La Farge and Homer D. 
 Martin, Albert P. Ryder and John S. Sargent. It is to this group 
 
 75 
 
AFTERWORD 
 
 that Louis C. Tiffany belongs, and if the relationship is not always 
 recognized the reason lies in the fact that he made so great a name in 
 the arts and crafts that his achievements in this field have thrown his 
 work as a painter in the shade. There was a time, however, when 
 his paintings and water colors at the exhibitions of the National 
 Academy, the Society of American Artists and the New York Water 
 Color Society were recognized as the work of a colorist by those who 
 know enough to value the rare gifts of an eye for color and a hand 
 capable of making color sing from the canvas. 
 
 It was with this uncommon endowment, so generally misunderstood, 
 that he turned to forms of art which demand color-feeling in an artist 
 even more than does oil-painting; for they offer no methods of getting 
 round the issue as oil-painting can be made to do for the near-colorist. 
 Mosaics that admit of no shadows and confused lines, glass through 
 which the light shines revealingly, textiles that are moved about in this 
 or that light, these are things that test an artist on the color-side and 
 permit of no evasion. In the queer, half-conscious art faith of the 
 artist, such works rank far below the painted canvas; in their unwritten 
 book of nobility the workmen in the arts and crafts are mere bons 
 bourgeois, while they are the upper crust. Without reasoning on the 
 matter, they take opinions ready-made like the generality of people and 
 learn from their school days that the painters of easel pictures form the 
 aristocracy of the profession. Without going farther into the matter 
 and showing historically and sociologically how this odd situation 
 among painters has come about, let us merely note that Tiffany was too 
 intelligent an artist to be thus deceived and being naturally of an 
 inventive turn of mind, proceeded to devote himself to other lines of 
 work which called upon his talent with even greater force. 
 
 It has been told how stained glass fascinated him and how he helped 
 to place that exquisite form of art expression again before the world 
 with a richness and magnificence of color only to be equalled by the 
 men of the thirteenth century, who filled the great bays of Gothic aisles 
 
 76 
 
AFTERWORD 
 
 and chancels with splendor, so that America, not Europe, now makes 
 stained glass for true connoisseurs. Out of this school of American 
 painters in glass came, thanks to Tiffany’s inventive mind, the small glass 
 objects like the Favrile and other styles, together with a variety of objects 
 in glass too many for anything but a catalogue. Glazes on pottery claimed 
 much of his time during certain years; enamels on copper were brought 
 to public notice; jewelry of an original and individual kind found and 
 still finds a big circle of admirers. Indeed, as time went on, the 
 number of different art-works to which he gave attention became so 
 great that it seemed marvelous that one man, however well supported 
 by capable assistants, could find the waking hours in which to keep 
 track of them all. No one could have done it all except a person who 
 could double his existence as a creative artist with the life of a business 
 man. 
 
 A vast amount of work was turned out in the quarters of the Tiffany 
 Glass Company at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-Fifth Street, but when he 
 moved his art shops to Madison Avenue and Forty-Fifth Street, taking 
 possession of the building erected for the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, 
 the supervision of so great a business by itself made demands on the 
 nerves which might seem enough for any man without the addition 
 thereto of individual exertion. 
 
 Yet all this while Mr. Tiffany was so far from neglecting home life 
 under the stress of business plus creative art in the various fields of his 
 endeavor that he found time to plan and carefully carry out no less than 
 four homes in succession. Nor were these ordinary dwellings. Each 
 apartment was the result of intense application as to its general scheme, 
 and every part of each room was studied for its color-scheme, the 
 lighting by day and night, and the disposal of art objects of the greatest 
 beauty and value. As to the two country houses as parts of the 
 landscape, the matter has been treated in the last chapter. His delight 
 in flowers has resulted in great attention to the growing of native and 
 exotic plants, some for their blossoms, others for their frondage. We 
 
 77 
 
AFTERWORD 
 
 may fairly ask, how could he have made the time to attend to all these 
 things in town and out of town? It is true that he has denied himself 
 distant travels. He has not yet visited Japan and India, though the pull 
 in that direction must always have been very strong. 
 
 It is about half a century ago that he showed in his art the influence 
 
 4 
 
 of the Orient, yet Turkey and Algiers are the only parts of the East 
 that he has studied on the spot, so far. In one sense his life may be 
 said to have been uneventful, if we speak from the traveler’s point of 
 view, but not so if we put ourselves in the place of the artist and 
 inventor. It can never be said of him that a rolling stone gathers no 
 moss. When we think of the silent effect produced in a thousand 
 families, and in more museums than could easily be named, by the 
 inspiring art-works he has produced, we can say sincerely that he has 
 deserved well of the republic. 
 
 THE END 
 

 
 
 
 
 INDEX 
 
 i 
 
 
 

INDEX 
 
 Academies, prejudices imbibed from, xvii 
 Academy of Design, National, 5, 8, 9, 76 
 Africa, Leon Belly’s travels in northern, 8; 
 his superb views from, 8; mosaic pavements 
 surviving in different parts of northern, 48 
 Aholiab, son of Ahisamach of the tribe of 
 Dan, and an expert in textiles, 41 
 Alchemists, methods and materials of, xx 
 Algiers, travel in, xvii; shelves set with 
 spoils from, 56; art studies of Louis C. 
 Tiffany in, 78 
 
 Amateurs, restricted public of, xviii 
 America, existing art conditions in, xvii; so- 
 called colonial architecture in,xxii; Tiffany 
 realizes possibilities of stained glass as new 
 field of delightful work in, 16; modern 
 methods of producing stained glass in, 18, 
 19; now makes stained glass for true con¬ 
 noisseurs, 77. See United States 
 America, North. See North America 
 American Artists, Society of, 5, 9, 76 
 American Indians. See Indians 
 American Water Color Society, 5, 8, 76 
 Amsterdam, charm of water spaces of, 70 
 Andromache, in Greek legend, wife of Hec¬ 
 tor, 41 
 
 Angelo, Michael (Michelangelo Buonarroti), 
 Italian sculptor, painter, architect and 
 poet, xxi 
 
 Architects, erroneous conventions of, xvii 
 Architectural league, establishment of, 9 
 
 Architecture, so-called colonial, in America, 
 xxii; use of mural painting as adornment 
 of, xxiv; Louis C. Tiffany enchanted by 
 broad masses of Moslem, 9; age of splen¬ 
 dor of Gothic, 15; deplorable effect of 
 certain prejudices on American church, 22; 
 profoundly affected by motives taken 
 originally from woven goods, 39, 70; use 
 of neutral tints in, 43; Hunt’s protest 
 against so-called classicism in, 71, 72. See 
 Gothic Architecture , Landscape Architec¬ 
 ture , Romanesque style , Moslem Architecture 
 Art, workers in various fields of, xv; activi¬ 
 ties in, xvi; conditions affecting, xvi; effect 
 of too narrow an estimate of world-wide 
 mystery of, xvi; natural and normal error 
 of painters and sculptors with regards to, 
 xvi; illuminating influence of, as practised 
 by craftsmen of Orient, xvi, xvii; gap 
 between people and objects of pure, xviii; 
 objects of, without practical end in them¬ 
 selves, xviii; beginnings of what fairly may 
 be termed, xviii; difficulty of drawing line 
 between non-esthetic and esthetic, xix; air 
 of mystery surrounding production of 
 work of, xix; demands of, xx; elements 
 entering into the making of a work of, 
 xx, xxi; theories as to rise and growth 
 of, xxii; preposterous forms of, xxii; 
 effects of the popularizing of, xxiv. See 
 Greek Art 
 
 81 
 
INDEX 
 
 Artists, fellow, of Louis C. Tiffany, xv; 
 character and output of, xvi; effect upon, 
 of too exclusive belief in what is termed 
 the fine arts, xvi; movement felt by West¬ 
 ern, xvii; of the Renaissance, xvii; degrees 
 established among, xvii; craftsmen nearer 
 to the people than, xvii, xviii; air of 
 mystery surrounding work of, xix; earlier, 
 not behindhand in magnifying their office, 
 xx; rarely examiners of their own mental 
 processes, xx; elements entering into work 
 of, xx, xxi; some deep-lying need supplied 
 by, xxi; seem to have appeared in families 
 and clans, xxi; abolition of old limitations 
 imposed by, xxiv; colorists antagonized 
 and decried by certain, 15; things of use 
 made beautiful by, 28; queer, half-conscious 
 art faith of, 76. See Colorists , Landscape 
 Architects., Painters, Pastelists, Plein-airists , 
 Sculptors 
 
 Arts, Master of. See Master of Arts 
 Art Schools, prejudices imbibed from, xvii; 
 
 decline of, xxiii; earlier traditions of, 8 
 Arts Decoratifs, Musee des, Paris, 32 
 Asia, children employed in manual drudgery 
 of loom in, 42 
 
 Asia Minor, ancient temples of, 67 
 Athene, in Greek Mythology, the goddess of 
 wisdom and war, xix; young girls make 
 peplos offered every four years to, 42 
 Athenians, deities of ancient, xxii 
 Athens, young girls make peplos offered every 
 four years to Pallas Athene in ancient, 42 
 
 Barbizon, French village, noted as haunt of 
 group of painters, 15 
 
 Barrett, N. F., American landscape archi¬ 
 tect, 71 
 
 Bauer, Theodore, colored plaster-cast relief 
 by, 60 
 
 Beauvais, heavy leads and thick, dark-toned 
 panes in cathedral of, 17 
 
 Beaux Arts, Ecole des, Paris, 71 
 Beaux Arts, Societe Nationales des, 10 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, American Congrega¬ 
 tional clergyman, lecturer, reformer and 
 author, 31 
 
 Belgians, dark blue decorations of wood laid 
 on skins of early, xviii 
 Bella, The, Louis C. Tiffany’s New York 
 apartments, 55-57, 68 
 Belly, Leon, French artist, 8 
 Berzaleel, son of Uri of the tribe of Judah, 
 andanexpert in metalworkandcarpentry,41 
 Boldini, Andrea, worked in glass, 19 
 Book-lovers, combination of books and open 
 fireplace commends itself to, 57 
 Boston, Massachusetts, society of landscape 
 architects in, 67 
 
 Breton, Jules Adolphe Aime Louis, French 
 painter, 8 
 
 Briars, The, country home of Louis C. Tif¬ 
 fany on Long Island, 61, 69 
 Bric-a-brac, shelves containing admired speci¬ 
 mens 57 
 
 Britain, Great. See Great Britain 
 Britons, dark blue decorations of wood laid 
 on skins of early, xviii 
 Brooklyn, Louis C. Tiffany’s inventions and 
 experiments in stained glass in, 19; double 
 window of stained glass executed by Louis 
 C. Tiffany for church in, 20 
 Buonarroti, Michelangelo. See Angelo 
 Butler, George B., American artist, 5 
 Byzantines, glass windows on small scale used 
 by, 16 
 
 Byzantium, enamels of, studied by Louis C. 
 Tiffany, 33, 34 
 
 Caesars (Roman emperors), myrrhine glass¬ 
 ware held in high esteem under, 25 
 Canada, revival of so-called colonial archi¬ 
 tecture in, xxiii 
 
 Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 47, 49 
 
 82 
 
INDEX 
 
 Cellini,Benvenuto,Italian sculptor and worker 
 in gold and silver, xxi 
 
 Cennini, Cennino, early Italian authority on 
 colored glass, 17, 18, 20 
 Central Park, New York City, 59, 68 
 Century Club, Louis C. Tiffany elected to, 8 
 Chartres, heavy leads and thick, dark-toned 
 panes in cathedral of, 17 
 Chemistry,intimate connection between paint¬ 
 ing and, xx 
 
 Chevalier of Legion of Honor, Louis C. 
 
 Tiffany receives title of, 10, 11, 21 
 China, travel in, xvii; early art centres of, xxi; 
 enamels of, studied by Louis C. Tiffany, 
 33; stately and sober-toned rugs and car¬ 
 pets of, 42 
 
 Christ Church, Fairfield, Connecticut, stained 
 glass by Louis C. Tiffany in, 22 
 Church of England, 22 
 
 Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn, double 
 window of stained glass executed by Louis 
 C. Tiffany for, 20 
 Civil War, American, 5 
 
 “Cobblers at Boufarik,” genre picture by 
 Louis C. Tiffany, 9 
 
 Colman, Samuel, American artist, 5; his art 
 compared with that of Inness, 7; of a 
 Swedenborgian family, 7; his birth, 7; 
 exhibits for the first time, 7; travels in 
 Europe, 7; Tuckerman’s appreciation of, 
 7; holds sale of his pictures, 7; one of the 
 founders of the Society of American 
 Artists, 9 
 
 Color, remarks on use of, in the arts, 75, 
 76 
 
 Colorists, epoch of, in Holland, 15; appear¬ 
 ance of, in France, 15; antagonized and 
 decried by certain artists and critics, 15; exal¬ 
 tation of, 16; Louis C. Tiffany belongs with 
 painters embraced under broad term of, 75; 
 United States have had more than their 
 share of painters who come under head of, 75 
 
 Connoisseurs, restricted public of, xviii; 
 America, not Europe, now makes stained 
 glass for true, 77 
 
 Cooper, James Fenimore, American novel¬ 
 ist, 61 
 
 Corona, Long Island, glasshouse, established 
 at, by Louis C. Tiffany, 19, 20 
 
 Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille, French painter, 19 
 
 Craftsmanship, Louis C. Tiffany’s earlier 
 years, devoted to painting, not to, xvi 
 
 Craftsmen, illuminating influence of art as 
 practised by Oriental, xvi, xvii; many 
 painters and sculptors begin as, xvii; nearer 
 to the people than the artist, xvii, xviii; 
 mystery plays given by, in Middle Ages,xix 
 
 Crusades, the, expeditions undertaken by 
 Christians of Europe for recovery of Holy 
 Land from Mohammedans, 16 
 
 Da Vinci, Leonardo. See Vinci 
 
 Dead Sea, Leon Belly’s impressive canvas 
 representing the, 8 
 
 Decamps, Alexandre Gabriel, French pain¬ 
 ter, 9 
 
 Decoration, special studies of Louis C. 
 Tiffany in, xxv 
 
 Delacroix, Ferdinand Victor Eugene, French 
 painter, 15 
 
 Diaz, Porfirio, Mexican general, statesman 
 and ex-president, 51 
 
 Diodorus, surnamed Siculus, Greek his¬ 
 torian, 67 
 
 Downing, Andrew Jackson, American land¬ 
 scape gardener and pomologist, 71 
 
 D iirer, Albrecht, German painter and en¬ 
 graver, xxi 
 
 East, parts of the, studied by Louis C. 
 Tiffany, 78 
 
 Eaton, Wyatt, American painter, one of the 
 founders of the Society of American Ar¬ 
 tists, 9 
 
INDEX 
 
 Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, 71 
 Egypt, Leon Belly’s travels in, 8 ; fame of 
 ancient, for woven goods, 41 
 Eleusis, secret ritual of certain Greeks prac¬ 
 tised notably at, xix 
 
 El Greco, surname of Domenico Theoto- 
 copuli, Spanish painter, architect and 
 sculptor, xxi 
 
 Enamelers, similarity in methods and mate¬ 
 rials of alchemists and, xx 
 Enamels, work of Louis C. Tiffany in, xxv, 
 77; synthetic treatment of, 31; original, 
 designed by Louis C. Tiffany, 32 et seq.; 
 form permanent exhibits in many mu¬ 
 seums, 32 
 
 England, brown tones for figure scenes and 
 landscape conventionally accepted for a 
 century in, xxiii; fundamental quality 
 lacking in stained glass of, 1 5 
 Episcopal Church of the United States, 22 
 Esthetics, tendency to establish system of 
 caste in realm of, xviii 
 Etching Club, New York, 9 
 Europe, artists of Renaissance in, xvii; ex¬ 
 isting art conditions in, xvii; fundamental 
 quality lacking in stained glass of, 15; 
 neglect of stained glass as branch of art 
 in, 16; window glass as we know it at¬ 
 tributable to people of northern, 16; loca¬ 
 tion of Kelts and Teutons in, 17; earliest 
 glass imported by Phoenicians in northern, 
 17; development of stained and trans¬ 
 parent glass in, 17; mosaic pavements 
 surviving in different parts of, 48 
 Europeans, figures of animals drawn and 
 carved by ancestors of earliest, xviii 
 
 Favrile Glass, various experiments by Louis 
 C. Tiffany result in production of, 25, 77; 
 its remarkable shapes, brilliant colors, and 
 manifold uses, 26 ; success of, brings imi¬ 
 tations, 26; further experiments in, 26, 27 ; 
 
 vies in beauty with antique glass, 27; used 
 in production of a thousand articles of 
 applied art, 27; happy influence of these 
 upon the public taste, 27, 28 ; articles of, 
 form permanent exhibits in many mu¬ 
 seums, 32 ; rich specimens of, 59 
 Fine Arts, effect of too exclusive belief in 
 what is termed, xvi; natural and normal 
 error of painters and sculptors with regard 
 to, xvi; obstinate devotion to some one 
 of the, xvii; so-called objects of the, xviii; 
 apparent exclusiveness and aristocracy in, 
 xviii; effect of changed conditions upon, 
 xxiv 
 
 Florence, Ghirlandaios of, origin of name, xvii 
 Floriculture, Louis C. Tiffany for many years 
 interested in, xxv 
 
 Fontainebleau, gardens of, compared with 
 those of Versailles, 69 
 
 Forum, The, Louis C. Tiffany contributes 
 article “American Art Supreme in Colored 
 Glass” to, 20, 25 
 
 “Four Seasons, The,” stained glass window 
 by Louis C. Tiffany, 20 
 France, handbooks used by artist-artisans 
 of, in seventeenth century, xx; brown 
 tones for figure scenes and landscape con¬ 
 ventionally accepted for a century in, xxiii; 
 destruction of power of caste in, xxiii, xxiv; 
 status of writer and artist in, xxiv; funda¬ 
 mental quality lacking in stained glass of, 
 15; appearance of colorists in, 15 
 Fuller, George, American painter, 75 
 Furniture, modern, of Germany, xxii; effect 
 of changed art conditions upon production 
 of, xxiv 
 
 Germany, modern furniture of, xxii; brown 
 tones for figure scenes and landscape con¬ 
 ventionally accepted for a century in, xxiii; 
 fundamental quality lacking in stained 
 glass of, 1 5 
 
INDEX 
 
 Ghirlandaios of Florence, origin of name, 
 xvii 
 
 Glass, origin and development of, 16 et seq.; 
 ancient, of Chinese, Venetian, Bohemian, 
 British make, 25; myrrhine, held in high 
 esteem under Caesars, 25 ; ancient Greek 
 and Roman, subjected to disintegrating 
 effects of burial, 27 ; effects produced on 
 ancient, by burial underground for cen¬ 
 turies, 63. See Favrile Glass , Stained 
 Glass 
 
 Glass-makers, similarity in methods and 
 materials of alchemists and, xx 
 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, German 
 poet, dramatist and prose-writer, 35 
 Goldsmith, Louis C. Tiffany son of man 
 who established his name the world over 
 as jeweler and, xvi; Ghirlandaios receive 
 name from proficiency of first of family in 
 work of, xvii 
 
 Gothic Architecture, age of splendor of, 15; 
 cathedral of St. John the Divine changed 
 from Romanesque to, 47 
 Gray, Henry Peters, American painter, 75 
 Great Britain, “ natural ” garden comes into 
 favor in, 70. See England 
 Greco, El. See El Greco 
 Greece, ancient temples of, 67 
 Greek Art, lavish use of colors in, 71 
 Greeks, secret ritual of, practised notably at 
 Eleusis, xix; clothing an indication of rank 
 among ancient, 40; great trade of early, 
 in textile goods, carpets, hangings and 
 shawls, 42 
 
 Grotesques, childish and insincere, xviii 
 Guatemala, decorative designs of temples, 
 palaces and communal houses in, 39 
 
 Harper s Monthly , extracts from contribu¬ 
 tion of George Inness to, 6, 7 
 Havemeyer, Henry O., mosaic work by 
 Tiffany in home of late, 50 
 
 Hector, in Greek legend, son of Priam and 
 Hecuba, and champion of the Trojans, 41 
 Helen, in Greek legend, wife of Menelaos, 
 abducted by Paris, 41 
 
 Hindus, marks made on faces by high-caste, 
 xviii; the peacock held in high esteem 
 by, 49 
 
 Hindustan, carved wood from, 58 
 Holland, epoch of colorists in, 15 
 Homer, Greek poet, traditional author of 
 Iliad and Odyssey and of certain hymns 
 to the gods, 40 
 
 Homer, Winslow, American artist, 5 
 House Building, much attention given by 
 Louis C. Tiffany to, xxv 
 Hunt, William Morris, American painter, 7,71 
 
 Imperial Society of Fine Arts, Tokio, 10 
 India, travel in, xvii; the peacock imported 
 from, by nations bordering on Medi¬ 
 terranean, 49 
 
 Indians, American, significance of use of 
 paint by, xix; preposterous forms of art 
 among, xxii 
 
 Inness, George, American artist, Louis C. 
 Tiffany haunts studio of, 5; peculiarly 
 fitted to rouse interest of pupil, 5 ; his 
 incisive, outspoken views on art, 5, 6; 
 influenced by teachings of Swedenborg, 6; 
 extracts from his contribution to Harper s 
 Monthly , 6, 7 ; did not give instruction in 
 painting, 7 ; had a good deal of William 
 Morris Hunt’s inspiriting quality, 7 ; was 
 a colorist and as such appealed to Tiffany, 
 7, 75 ; one of the founders of the Society 
 of American Artists, 9 
 Ireland, clothing an indication of rank among 
 Kelts of, 40 
 
 “ Irvington, In the Fields at,” scene from 
 domestic life, painted by Louis C. Tiffany, 
 10 
 
 Italian Renaissance. See Renaissance 
 
 85 
 
INDEX 
 
 Italy, brown tones for figure scenes and 
 landscape conventionally accepted for a 
 century in, xxiii; fundamental quality lack¬ 
 ing in stained glass of, 15; ancient tem¬ 
 ples of, 67; formal garden derives its an¬ 
 cestry from, 70 
 
 Ixtaccihuatl, extinct volcano in Mexico, re¬ 
 produced in mosaic by Tiffany, 50 
 
 Japan, travel in, xvii; early art centres of, 
 xxi; enamels of, studied by Louis C. 
 Tiffany, 33, 34; lavish use of colors in 
 modern, 71 
 
 Jeweler, Louis C. Tiffany son of man who 
 established his name the world over as 
 goldsmith and, xvi 
 
 Jewelry, work of Louis C. Tiffany in, xxv, 
 32 et seq., 77; use of neutral tints in, 43. 
 See Precious Stones 
 
 Jewels,original,designed by Louis C.Tiffany, 
 32 et seq.; form permanent exhibits in 
 many museums, 32 
 
 Jews, urged by Moses to bring material to 
 form the tabernacle, 41 
 
 Joseph, in Old Testament history, son of 
 Jacob and Rachel, 40 
 
 Juno, in Roman mythology, the queen of 
 heaven, 10, 49 
 
 Kelts, predecessors of Teutons in Europe, 
 17; clothing an indication of rank among,40 
 
 Keramics, quaint Oriental, 56 
 
 Laertes, in Greek legend, father of Odysseus 
 (Ulysses), 41 
 
 La Farge, John, American painter, decorator 
 and sculptor, xvii, 9, 34, 75 
 
 Landscape Architects, societies of, in New 
 York City and Boston, 67; more or less 
 at mercy of architects, 68 ; should be ar¬ 
 tists in the highest sense, 68 ; two camps 
 formed among, 70 
 
 Landscape Architecture, much attention 
 given by Louis C. Tiffany to, xxv; defi¬ 
 nition of, 67; its development into an inde¬ 
 pendent profession, 67; Louis C. Tiffany’s 
 achievements in field of, 68 et seq. 
 Landscape Gardening. See Landscape Archi¬ 
 tecture 
 
 Laurelton Hall, Long Island, from first to 
 last the house of Louis C. Tiffany, 62-64, 
 69 et seq. 
 
 Legion of Honor, Louis C. Tiffany receives 
 title of Chevalier of, 10, 11 
 Lighting, special studies of Louis C. Tiffany 
 in, xxv 
 
 London, mosaic fire-curtain in opera house 
 of City of Mexico unknown to playgoers 
 of, 50; relation of river Thames to, 70 
 Long Island, land-locked harbors of, xv; 
 Louis C. Tiffany’s country houses on, 61 
 et seq. 
 
 Lyceum Theatre, New York, decorated by 
 Louis C. Tiffany, 51 
 
 McKim, Mead & White, Messrs., Amer¬ 
 ican architects, 57, 58 
 
 Madison Avenue, New York, house of Louis 
 C. Tiffany on, 57-61 
 
 Malbone, Edward G., American painter, 75 
 Martin, Homer D., American painter, 9, 75 
 Marvel, Ik. See Mitchell , Donald Grant 
 Master of Arts, Louis C. Tiffany receives 
 honorary degree of, from Yale Univer¬ 
 sity, 11 
 
 Mediterranean, window glass as we know it 
 not attributable to people of, 16; the pea¬ 
 cock beloved by nations bordering on, 49 
 Medusa, in Greek mythology, one of the 
 Gorgons, xix 
 
 Mempes, Mortimer, British artist, xvii 
 Menelaos, in Greek legend, the son of 
 Atreus, brother of Agamemnon, and hus¬ 
 band of Helen, 41 
 
 86 
 
INDEX 
 
 Metropolitan Life Building, New York, 51 
 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 32 
 Mexico, early art centres of, xxi 
 Mexico, City of, largest single complete work 
 in mosaic designed by Tiffany for opera 
 house in, 50, 51 
 Michelangelo. See Angelo 
 Middle Ages, mystery plays given by crafts¬ 
 men of, xix 
 
 Mitchell, Donald Grant (pseudonym, Ik 
 Marvel), American essayist and novelist, 57 
 Monet, Claude, French painter, xxiii 
 Morocco, travel in, xvii 
 Mosaic, work of Louis C. Tiffany in, xxv ; 
 use of neutral tints in, 43 ; chapel in crypt 
 of Cathedral of St. John the Divine 
 decorated by Tiffany in, 47 et seq other 
 works in, by Tiffany, 50, 51 ; admits of 
 no shadows and confused lines, 76 
 Moses, in Old Testament history, the law¬ 
 giver of the Israelites and organizer of the 
 Israelitish nation, 41 
 
 Moslem Architecture, Tiffany enchanted by 
 broad masses of, 9 
 
 Munich, well-known English Garden at, 70 
 Musee des Arts decoratifs, Paris, 32 
 Mystery Plays, given by craftsmen of Middle 
 Ages, xix 
 
 Nash, Arthur J., practical glass manufac¬ 
 turer, 19 
 
 National Academy of Design, 5, 8, 9, 76 
 National Sculpture Society, 9 
 New York City, unusual movement in art 
 matters in, 9; mosaic fire-curtain in opera 
 house of City of Mexico unknown to 
 playgoers of, 50; society of landscape 
 architects in, 67 
 New York Etching Club, 9 
 New York Society of Fine Arts, 9 
 New Zealand, designs carved on columns, 
 shields and paddles by nations of, xix 
 
 North America, carved and ornamented stone 
 pipes made by tribes of, xxi 
 
 Olmsted, Frederick Law, American land¬ 
 scape architect, 68, 71 
 
 Orient, illuminating influence of art as prac¬ 
 tised by craftsmen of, xvi, xvii; appeal 
 made by arts of, 8 ; Tiffany’s genre pic¬ 
 tures from, 9; recognition of Tiffany’s 
 leaning toward, 10. See East 
 
 Orientals, character of, expressed in paintings 
 by Louis C. Tiffany, 9 
 
 Painters, natural and normal error of, xvi; 
 erroneous conventions of, xvii; degrees 
 established among, xvii; many, begin as 
 craftsmen, xvii; similarity in methods and 
 materials of alchemists and, xx; broad¬ 
 ening of field for, xxiv; high-sounding 
 claims of academical, xxv; odd situation 
 among, 76 
 
 Painters in Water Colors, Society of, 5 
 
 Painting, Louis C. Tiffany’s earlier years 
 devoted to, xvi; intimate connection be¬ 
 tween chemistry and, xx; great and in¬ 
 creasing demand for mural, xxiv; color 
 the most important ingredient in, 16; 
 action of sculpture upon, 39 
 
 Paintings, meaning of early stainings and, 
 xviii; frequently valued for decorative 
 effect alone, xix; notable, by Louis C. 
 Tiffany, 9, 10; Venetian, 75 
 
 Palestine, travel in, xvii, 8 ; Leon Belly’s 
 pictures of, 8 
 
 Pallas Athene. See Athene 
 
 Paris, honors bestowed upon Louis C. 
 Tiffany in, 10, 11, 21; mosaic fire-curtain 
 in opera house of City of Mexico un¬ 
 known to playgoers of, 50; relation of 
 river Seine to, 70 
 
 Paris Exposition, 1900, Louis C. Tiffany 
 wins gold medal and title of Chevalier of 
 Legion of Honor at, 10, 11, 21 
 
 87 
 
INDEX 
 
 Parthenon, official temple of Pallas at Athens, 
 hangings in, 42 
 
 Pastelists, attitude of other artists toward, xvii 
 “Peacock,” painting by Louis C. Tiffany, 10 
 Peintres du Si'ecle , Nos. Jules Breton in, 8 
 Pelasgians, great trade of, in textile goods, 
 carpets, hangings and shawls, 42 
 Penelope, in Greek legend, wife of Odysseus 
 (Ulysses), 41 
 
 “Peonies,” painting by Louis C. Tiffany, 10 
 Pericles, Athenian statesman and orator, 
 xxii 
 
 Persia, travel in, xvii 
 Pheidias, Greek sculptor, 42 
 Phoenicians, earliest glass imported by, into 
 northern Europe, 17; great trade of, in 
 textile goods, carpets, hangings and shawls, 
 42 
 
 Plato, Greek philosopher, xxii 
 Plein-airists, obligations to science of, xx 
 Polynesians, dots, lines or figures stained or 
 painted upon face or body of, xix 
 “Pool, The,” painting by Louis C. Tiffany, 9 
 Popocatepetl, extinct volcano in Mexico, re¬ 
 produced in mosaic by Tiffany, 50 
 Porcelain, action of basketry upon, 39; 
 Chinese, Persian and European, 39; rare 
 Oriental, 59; Chinese, 75 
 Pottery, work of Louis C. Tiffany in, xxv; 
 action of basketry upon, 39; Chinese, Per¬ 
 sian and European, 39; use of neutral 
 tints in, 43 ; rare glazes for, made by Louis 
 C. Tiffany, 72, 77 
 
 Precious Stones, synthetic treatment of, 3 1; 
 extraordinary collections of, amassed by 
 Tiffany & Company, 33 
 Psyche, in classical mythology, the beloved 
 of Eros, 10 
 
 Ravenna, mosaics surviving at, 48 
 Rembrandt, Hermanzoon van Rijn, Dutch 
 painter and etcher, 75 
 
 Renaissance, artists of, xvii; enamels of, 
 studied by Louis C. Tiffany, 33, 34; false 
 idea of classic art grows up during period 
 of, 48, 71; landscape gardening or landscape 
 architecture as practised in the Italian, 67 
 Richardson, Henry Hobson, American archi¬ 
 tect, 57 
 
 Rodin, Auguste, French sculptor, xxiii 
 Romanesque Style, cathedral of St. John 
 the Divine changed from, to Gothic, 47 
 Romans, definite rules as to colors of toga 
 among ancient, 40 
 Rome, mosaics surviving at, 48 
 Rugs, work of Louis C. Tiffany in, xxv 
 Ryder, Albert P., American painter, 75 
 
 Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, American sculptor, 
 one of the founders of the Society of 
 American Artists, 9 
 
 St. John the Divine, Cathedral of, 47, 49 
 Salviati, Dr., worker in glass, 19 
 Sargent, John Singer, American painter, 
 xxiii, 75 
 
 Scotland, clothing an indication of rank 
 among Kelts of, 40 
 
 Sculptors, natural and normal error of, xvi; 
 erroneous conventions of, xvii; many, 
 begin as craftsmen, xvii 
 Sculpture, frequently valued for decorative 
 effect alone, xix; use of color in, xxiii; 
 use of neutral tints in, 43 
 Sculpture Society, National, 9 
 Seine River, relation of, to Paris, 70 
 Seventh Regiment Armory, New York, Vet¬ 
 erans’ Room in, decorated by Louis C. 
 Tiffany, 51 
 
 Siculus. See Diodorus 
 Smillie, James D., American painter, 7 
 Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts, 10 
 Society of American Artists, 5, 9, 76 
 Society of Fine Arts, New York, 9 
 Society of Painters in Water Colors, 5 
 
 88 
 
INDEX 
 
 Socrates, Greek philosopher, xxii 
 Sorolla y Bastida, Joaquin, Spanish painter, 
 likeness of Louis C. Tiffany painted by, 
 xv, 64 
 
 Stained Glass, work of Louis C. Tiffany in, 
 xxv, 76, 77; Tiffany’s creations in, known 
 far beyond borders of his own land, 11; 
 fundamental quality lacking in European, 
 15; color sense vital and necessary to artist 
 who attempts, 16; a branch of art neg¬ 
 lected, or rather badly served in Europe, 
 16; invention of, 16; directions for making, 
 by early Italian authority, 17, 18, 20; 
 modern methods of producing, in America, 
 18, 19; Louis C. Tiffany contributes to 
 Forum , article on American, 20; American 
 superior to mediaeval, 21; prejudices cf 
 clergymen and vestrymen in favor of 
 British, 22, 26; action of mosaic upon, 39 
 Stillmann, T. E., stained glass window exe¬ 
 cuted by Louis C. Tiffany for, 20 
 Stockholm, charm of water spaces of, 70 
 Stones, Precious. See Precious Stones 
 “Street Scene in Algiers,” genre picture by 
 Louis C. Tiffany, 9 
 Stuart, Gilbert, American painter, 75 
 “Studio,The,’’painting by LouisC.Tiffany, 10 
 Swedenborg, Emanuel, Swedish philosopher 
 and theosophist, 6 
 
 Tapestries, work of Louis C. Tiffany in, xxv 
 Tattoo Marks, significance of, xviii, xix 
 Teutons, location of, in Europe, 17 
 Textiles, Louis C. Tiffany’s work in, 42, 43; 
 Oriental keramics and, 56; designs for solid 
 stone and brick buildings copied from, 70; 
 Persian, 75; test an artist on the color-side 
 and permit of no evasion, 76. See Rugs , 
 Tapestries 
 
 Thames River, relation of, to London, 70 
 Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, Venetian painter, 
 5° 
 
 Tiffany, Charles Lewis, name of, established 
 the world over as goldsmith and jeweler, 
 xvi; business built up by, xvi; his great 
 success, xvi; birth of his son, Louis C. 
 Tiffany, 5; his great ability inherited by 
 his son, 32 
 
 Tiffany, Louis Comfort, volume written for 
 children of, xv; his fellow artists, xv; son 
 of man who established his name the world 
 over as goldsmith and jeweler, xvi; his 
 earlier years devoted to painting, xvi; this 
 period marked by reaction against com¬ 
 mercial element, xvi; sees the world, xvi; 
 influence upon, of art of Oriental crafts¬ 
 men, xvi, xvii, 34; public taste profoundly 
 affected by, xxiv; xxv; his notable work 
 in many branches of art, xxv; his birth 
 and bringing up, 5; at school when Civil 
 War was fought, 5; feels longing for 
 expression, which indicates the coming 
 artist, 5; haunts studios of Inness and 
 Colman, 5; admires and visits Leon Belly 
 of Paris, 8; studies hard under Bailly, 8; 
 elected to the Century Club, 8; accepted 
 as Associate of National Academy of 
 Design, 8; marries Miss Mary Wood- 
 bridge Goddard, 8; member of, and con¬ 
 tributor to, American Water Color Society, 
 8; enrages “legitimate” water colorists by 
 using body color freely, 8; one of the 
 founders of the Society of American 
 Artists, 9; elected National Academician; 
 9; works out some of his ideas in other 
 mediums than oils and water colors, 9; 
 enchanted by broad masses of Moslem 
 architecture in Algiers, 9; his work as 
 painter, 9 et seq.; elected to membership 
 in Imperial Society of Fine Arts inTokio, 
 10; becomes member of Societe Nationale 
 des Beaux Arts in Paris, 10; wins gold 
 medal and title of Chevalier of Legion of 
 Honor at Paris Exposition of 1900, 10, 
 
 89 
 
INDEX 
 
 11, 21; receives honorary degree of Master 
 of Arts from Yale University, 11; his 
 work as colorist prepares the way for his 
 notable creations in stained glass, 11; 
 realizes possibilities of stained glass as new 
 field of delightful work in America, 16; 
 his inventions and achievements in that 
 field, 19 et seq., 76, 77; various experi¬ 
 ments by, result in production of favrile 
 glass, 25 et seq.; his favrile glass vies in 
 beauty with antique glass, 27; his taste in 
 color finds expression in a thousand articles 
 of applied art, 27; happy influence of these 
 upon the public taste, 27, 28; enjoys exercis¬ 
 ing his faculties and taste in designing rare 
 and beautiful things, 3 1,32 ; foremost expo¬ 
 nent of arts and crafts in America, 32; 
 enameled objects and personal jewelry 
 designed by, 33 et seq.; his paintings of 
 roses, rhododendrons and paeonies, 34; 
 devotes a few hours a day to enamels and 
 jewelry, 35; value of his efforts to the 
 public, 35; his work in the field of textiles, 
 42, 43; master of gamut of colors in most 
 diverse branches of art, 43; educational 
 influence of his work upon the public, 43; 
 chapel in crypt of Cathedral of St. John 
 the Divine decorated in mosaic by, 47 et 
 seq.; other works in mosaic by, 50, 51; 
 how he transformed the Bella apartments, 
 55-57; house of, on Madison Avenue, 
 described, 57-61; his country home, The 
 Briars, on Long Island, 61; buys more 
 property and lays out plans for spacious 
 country house, outbuildings and grounds, 
 61, 62; Laurelton Hall, from first to last, 
 the house of, 62-64; his achievements in 
 the field of landscape architecture, 68 et 
 seq.; rare glazes for pottery made by, 72; 
 belongs with painters embraced under 
 broad term of colorists, 75, 76; his work 
 as painter overshadowed by his achieve¬ 
 
 ments in the field of arts and crafts, 76; 
 his paintings at the exhibitions, 76; his 
 uncommon endowment prompts him to 
 turn from painting to other forms of 
 art, 76; creative artist and business man, 
 77; moves his art shops to Madison 
 Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, 77; so far 
 from neglecting home life that he has 
 planned four homes in succession, 77; 
 his delight in flowers, 77; influence of the 
 Orient upon his art, 78; silent effect pro¬ 
 duced by his inspiring art-works, 78; de¬ 
 serves well of the republic, 78 
 Tiffany & Company, great building of, on 
 Fifth Avenue, 32; extraordinary collec¬ 
 tions of gems and colored stones amassed 
 b Y> 33 
 
 Tiffany Furnaces, origin of, 19; change of 
 title to, 20 
 
 Tiffany Glass Company, vast amount of 
 work turned out by, 77 
 Tiffany Studios, stained glass windows for 
 churches, public buildings and homes de¬ 
 signed in, 22; largest single complete work 
 in mosaic issues from, 50 
 Tokio, honor bestowed upon Louis C. Tif¬ 
 fany in, 10 
 
 Topsy, an amusing negro girl in “Uncle 
 Tom’s Cabin,” by Harriet BeecherStowe,6o 
 Trattato della Pittura, early Italian work on 
 colored glass, 17, 18 
 
 Tuckerman, Henry Theodore, American 
 critic, essayist and poet, 7 
 Turkey, art studies of Louis C. Tiffany in, 78 
 
 United States, revival of so-called colonial 
 architecture in, xxiii; destruction of power 
 of caste in, xxiii, xxiv; status of writer and 
 artist in, xxiv; the formal and the natural 
 garden in, 71; have had more than their 
 share of painters who come under head of 
 colorists, 75 
 
 90 
 
INDEX 
 
 “Valiant Woman,The,” stained glass window 
 by Louis C. Tiffany, 20 
 Vaux, Calvert, Anglo-American landscape 
 architect, 68, 71 
 
 Vedder, Elihu, American artist, 5 
 Velasquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva, Spanish 
 painter, 75 
 
 Venetians, figures of gold foil imprisoned in 
 bottom of drinking cups by old, 27 
 Venice, charm of water spaces of, 70 
 Versailles, gardens of, compared with those of 
 Fontainebleau, 69 
 
 Victoria and Albert Museum, South Ken¬ 
 sington, London, 32 
 
 Vienna, Tiffany favrile glass imitated in, 26 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, Italian painter, architect, 
 sculptor and musician, xxi 
 
 Wallace, Mrs. Celia H., buys Tiffany’s 
 Chapel of the Crypt, 48, 49 ; presents it 
 to Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 
 New York City, 49 
 Walters Gallery, Baltimore, 32, 33 
 
 Washington Square, New York, 6 
 Water Colors, Japanese, 75 
 Water Color Society, American, 5, 8, 76 
 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, American 
 painter and etcher, xvii, xxiii, 34, 47, 75 
 “Woodland,” painting by Louis C.Tiffany, 10 
 World’s Fair, Chicago, no provision made 
 by managers of, for showing American 
 stained glass windows, 21, 25; Tiffany’s 
 Chapel of the Crypt exhibited at, 48, 49 
 
 Xenophon, Greek historian and essayist, 
 xxii, 67 
 
 Yale University, Louis C. Tiffany receives 
 honorary degree of Master of Arts from, 
 11 
 
 York, heavy leads and thick, dark-toned 
 panes in cathedral of, 17 
 Young, Harriet Olivia, wife of Charles L., 
 and mother of Louis C. Tiffany, 5 
 Yucatan, decorative designs of temples, 
 palaces and communal houses in, 39 
 
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY 
 
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 THE QETTV QEWre^ 
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