Louis Comfort Tiffany

Living among relics that speak to the natural world can provide us with a daily reminder of our place within the larger ecological picture. Maybe this is what’s appealing about the glass works of Louis Comfort Tiffany which we’ve gathered from the Smithsonian’s online collection.

Originally a fine artist, Tiffany (the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany of Tiffany and Co) gained design fame for his work in interior design, where his creative versatility extended into furniture, textiles, and of course glass. His designs came to life through teams of artisans that would fabricate his designs using methods that were innovative for the time such as favrile and opalescent glass where the glass itself was colored and sculpted taking on the organic form of natural things like stems, seed pods, vines. His work is one of the primary examples of Art Nouveau and it’s cool to think that when the work first emerged 100 years ago it looked modern and that some of it still does.

Words by Dante Iniguez.