Louis Comfort Tiffany, Manufacturer: Tiffany Studios
Date:
1905
Medium:
Favrile glass mosaic tiles, concrete, gilded plaster capitals with embedded glass jewels
Size:
Depth: 24 1/2″
Width: 24 1/2″
Height: 134 1/2″

Many “modern” objects are inextricably tied to the past. In the late 1890s, Louis Comfort Tiffany gained international acclaim for iridescent objects recalling the luxuries of ancient Rome, Pompeii, and Constantinople. These two columns are covered with thousands of Favrile glass tesserae (tiles) in shades ranging from peacock to midnight blue to black. At the top, Tiffany’s tile setters used golden “Cypriot” glass tiles to create a grid pattern festooned with opulent cords and tassels that recall the upholstery trimmings found on furniture of the same period as the columns. Tiffany developed the finely pitted surface of Cypriot glass to evoke time-worn, eroded glass shards excavated in archeological digs on the island of Cyprus.

The BMA’s two columns are part of a group of six that originally decorated the Tiffany Studios showrooms at Fifth Avenue and 37th Street. A pamphlet celebrating Louis Comfort Tiffany’s new retail location described the columns’ style as “Pompeiian Ionic order.” (The capitals and bases are actually made of plaster and concrete rather than marble.) When Tiffany Studios declared bankruptcy in 1932, the six columns were moved to Tiffany’s estate on Long Island. After the main house burned in 1957, the columns, which had been stored in a stable, eventually came to market.

Purchase with exchange funds from Gift of Dr. and Mrs. James Bing, Baltimore, and Young Friends of the American Wing Fund BMA 1989.79.1-2

Looking Up and Around

Transcript

[David Park Curry] It’s hard to miss these mosaic columns. They are covered with thousands of little glass
tiles. The two columns, if you look carefully, you’ll see that one’s got a peacock blue tile. There’s a general
shading that’s similar, but you won’t find them matching. It’s all done by hand.
[Aaron Henkin] They were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and executed by workers in his busy studio.
[David Park Curry] He’s very much influenced here by knowledge of ancient arts. Mosaics were a very big
deal in Greek and Roman times. We look at the gold tassel work. It’s like what you’d expect on a fat
upholstered chair, but it’s executed in another glass called Cypriot glass, which he specifically developed to
have a kind of a pitted rough surface that was to remind you of the ancient glass that was being dug up at
various sites around the world. These columns, however, were made for the Tiffany Studios venue in
midtown Manhattan, and it would’ve been a glorious, eye-popping set up with actual fabric between the
curtains in the studio shop.

Mosaics as Connection to the Past

Transcript

[Aaron Henkin] Hi, Aaron Henkin here with mosaic artist Rick Shelley. And Rick, these columns are here in
the museum right next to a window, and I imagine that’s no mistake.
[Rick Shelley] In ancient churches and cathedrals, they’ll always put a mosaic opposite a window so that you
get the light coming in, bouncing off the mosaic and back to your eye. Step out into the atrium and don’t
miss the wonderful ancient stone mosaics from Antioch. In those you not only have patterns, but you have
images of birds and lions, and also figures of people done in mosaic work. So when you look at these columns
by Tiffany, you can see that he’s in a long line of tradition going way back to the ancient times.