Vase with morning glory motif

BRIEF DESCRIPTION
This Tiffany vase is made of transparent clear glass and colored glass. Notice the large blue flowers and leaves arranged within the glass around the shoulder.

WHERE WAS IT MADE?
Tiffany glass was made at the Tiffany Glass Furnaces in Corona, located in Queens, New York.

WHO WAS THE ARTIST?
Louis Comfort Tiffany was the eldest son of Charles L. Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Company, the New York jeweler. Tiffany was trained as a painter, studying with both George Inness and Samuel Coleman in New York and Leon Bailly in Paris. He eventually turned his attention to decorative arts and began experimenting with glass-making techniques in 1875. After success with stained glass windows and mosaics, Tiffany established the Tiffany Glass Company in 1885 and began devoting production to one-of-a-kind blown glass art objects. He soon became one of America’s most prolific designers, providing furniture, wallcoverings, textiles, jewelry and glass to some of society’s most important citizens.

HOW WAS IT MADE?
This vase is made from crystal using the paperweight technique. Crystal is a popular term for colorless lead glass, which has a high refractive index and is particularly brilliant. In the United Kingdom, glass described as crystal must contain a defined percentage of lead oxide.

The paperweight technique is a method of working with glass where small glass sculptures are formed from individual pieces of glass and then covered with clear glass.

To see two Tiffany paperweights in the Johnson Museum’s collection, search for object numbers 57.085 and 57.089 in the keyword search box.

WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE THIS?
The flowers set within this vase are typical of Tiffany’s Art Nouveau style objects. Art Nouveau, French for “New Art,” refers to an artistic style that was developed in Europe in the 1880s, and remained enormously popular into the first decade of the 20th century. It is characterized by whiplash curves, organic imagery and sinuous lines. The name Art Nouveau came from the Paris shop of Siegfried Bing that opened in 1895, quickly popularizing the works of artists like Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose work became synonymous with (or symbolic of) the American Art Nouveau style.

Tiffany believed that nature was the true source of artistic inspiration. He was fascinated by the colors found in flowers and plants. He tried to incorporate nature into his designs, often as realistically as possible, showing flowers and plants in various stages of bloom.