Vase with green millefiori effect

BRIEF DESCRIPTION
This is a green glass Tiffany vase. Notice the leaf and floral design on the top half of the vase.

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?
Like most Tiffany vases, this vase was created using a blowpipe. The iridescence of the glass was achieved by a process developed in the early 19th century in which metallic substances were either added to the batch when forming the vessel, or the surface of the vessel was coated with metallic oxides like stannous chloride or lead chloride before firing. Different oxides were known to produce different pigments.

The decoration on this vase is called Millefiori, Italian for “1,000 flowers.” Millefiori refers to a technique where a bundle of thin glass canes or rods are heated until they fuse together and are then thinly sliced cross-sectionally, resulting in flower-like disks. The disks are applied to a vessel, which is then reheated, producing an ornamental design upon the surface.

WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE THIS?
This vase is an example of Tiffany’s Favrile glass. In 1894, Tiffany patented his iridescent glass under the name Favrile. The word Favrile is derived from the Old English fabrile, meaning hand-wrought. Tiffany design was inspired by glass from ancient Rome and the Islamic world, Venice and Bohemia. Tiffany combined his talent as a colorist, naturalist, and designer with his experimentations on blown glass surfaces. Vessels were fumed with metallic oxides to achieve iridescence. To see other examples of Tiffany’s Favrile glass in the Johnson Museum’s collection, search for object numbers 57.072, 57.080, 57.088, 57.097, 64.0840, 64.0841, 64.0842, 64.0843, 64.0850, 64.0865, 64.0875, 64.0879, 64.0885, 64.0889, 64.0898, 64.0904, 99.078.118 a,b, and 2001.075.003 in the keyword search box.

The floral decorations on 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.