Louis Comfort Tiffany At The Metropolitan Museum

Reprint of the Metropolitan Museum of Art bulletin (summer 1998).

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) was one of America's preeminent masters of the decorative arts. Although he is best known for his prodigious achievements in glass, especially for his vibrantly colored windows and lamps, Tiffany excelled in a wide range of media - mosaics, enamels, metalwork, ceramics, and jewelry - all handsomely represented in this publication by pieces from the Metropolitan Museum's outstanding collection of Tiffany works. Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum, presents Tiffany's works in the context of his career, discusses his artistic themes and his devotion to nature, and sheds new light on his technical virtuosity. She has illustrated her text with many of Tiffany's water-color presentation drawings selected from the more than 400 in the Museum's collections. Many of these drawings, made by Tiffany and his artists over a period of forty years, are reproduced here for the first time.

Laurelton Hall, Louis Comfort Tiffany's (American, 1848-1933) extraordinary country estate in Oyster Bay, New York, completed in 1905, was the epitome of Tiffany's achievement and in many ways defined this multifaceted artist. Tiffany designed every aspect of the project inside and out, creating a total aesthetic environment. This publication accompanies an exhibition that reveals Tiffany's most personal art, bringing into focus this remarkable artist who lavished as much care and creativity on the design and furnishing of his home and gardens as he did on all the wide-ranging media in which he worked. Although the house tragically burned to the ground in 1957, many of its surviving architectural elements and interior characteristics are included in this volume. Also featured are Tiffany's personal collections of his own work-breathtaking stained-glass windows, paintings, glass and ceramic vases-as well as the artist's collections of Japanese, Chinese, and Native American works of art. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

"The binding's embossed squares allude visually to Tiffany's work in metal, stained glass, jewelry and textiles. ... The book was included in the Cooper-Hewitt 2016 exhibit "Passion for the Exotic: Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lockwood de Forest." --Marilyn Braiterman.