Red and White Peonies by John LaFarge, c. 1885
Opalescent Glass, Tiffany and La Farge
The opulence of American Industrial Society produced a shift of taste away from Gothic Revival architecture to a renewed interest in classical forms embellished with the grandeur of the Renaissance. Families such as the Vanderbilts constructed enormous "chateaus" filled with stained glass, but the nature and design of much of this glass was peculiarly American. The new "American" glass preferred by Tiffany, La Farge, D. Maitland Armstrong and other glass artists was called opalescent glass. Unlike antique pot-metal glass that is relatively translucent, opalescent glass reflects as well as refracts light. The milky and swirling mixture of colors in opalescent glass was a perfect compliment to the marble and stone interiors of most neo-classical structures. While opalescent windows let in less light than traditional windows, electricity provided the key for lighting the dark neoclassical interiors filled with finely carved statuary and elaborate fixtures. As you would expect with any classical motif, the opalescent glass designers relied heavily on statuary forms with figures standing in niches or surrounded by columns.
John La Farge was the first designer to incorporate opalescent glass into a window and received a patent for his new product on February 24, 1880. Louis Comfort Tiffany, a member of the family renowned for their silver firm, received several patents for variations of the same opalescent process in November of the same year. La Farge was persuaded by Tiffany with hints of a future partnership and possible collaborations to waive his patent. The promises never materialized while competition and animosity grew between the two artists. Eventually Tiffany became the darling of the Gilded Age industrialists and he created a glass and decorating studio that boasted more than a hundred workers. La Farge remained the lone artist who contracted out fabrication of his designs to smaller studios. Beyond Tiffany and La Farge a plethora of stained glass studios developed in America around the turn of the century.
The work of Tiffany and La Farge at its best is romantic and contemplative. Unique to their work was the glass itself which could be used to portray the depth of color in a bending flower petal or a variation of atmospheric effects in a spectacular sky. Tiffany was particularly successful in his development of the landscape windows, some of which contained thousands of tiny pieces of glass used for individual leafs, berries and flowers. Tiffany became just as famous for a small offshoot of his window business, the design and fabrication of art glass lamps. While Tiffany created his prodigious empire, sometimes producing uninspired stock designs thousands of times over, La Farge created unique one of a kind windows noted for their strong emotional content and bold use of color. Among the three hundred windows credited to La Farge more than a few are seen as masterpieces.
Grape Arbor Window by The Tiffany Studio
