The work of Tiffany Studios

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2005 by Nina Gray

In June 2004 the New-York Historical Society unveiled the installation of a series of five leaded stained-glass windows depicting the Good Shepherd (Pl. V), originally created for the chapel of the Stony Wold Sanatorium in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. (1) The panels were obtained sometime after 1974 by the pioneering collector of Tiffany glass Dr. Egon Neustadt, an Austrian immigrant, New York City orthodontist, and successful real estate developer. At that time most of the sanatorium had been sold to New York State. (2) Within a decade, the Stony Wold panels were separated and consigned to storage at the society and at the Neustadt Museum of Tiffany Art in Long Island City, New York. In 2002 the windows were recognized as a cohesive whole, prompting an investigation by the society's curators that revealed their provenance and reunited them. (3) Now the windows offer a glimpse into the ingenuity and breadth of Tiffany Studios under the leadership of its founder and design director. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), many of whose remarkable works are an important component of the society's decorative arts collection.

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The son of the famous New York jewelry and silver retailer Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812-1902). Louis C. Tiffany studied to be a landscape painter. His earliest professional success, however, was as an interior decorator with the short-lived decorating firm Louis C. Tiffany and Company, established in New York City in 1880, which specialized in furniture. Tiffany consolidated his interest in decoration with his partnership in Louis C. Tiffany and Company, Associated Artists in 1881. (4) After his separation from the firm in 1883, Tiffany directed an expanding business that encompassed interior decoration, glass, ceramics, enamels, metalwork, textiles, stonework, jewelry, and above all the manufacture of the opalescent glass that has since become legendary. Tiffany's quest for beauty and his high standards of craftsmanship and materials led him to create the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company in Corona, New York, succeeded by Tiffany Studios and Tiffany Furnaces.

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The Stony Wold Sanatorium at Lake Kushaqua, New York, was a charity funded by prominent members of New York society for working girls and children from New York City, who were susceptible to tuberculosis because of their crowded living and working conditions. (5) The "Wilderness Cure," as the treatment in the Adirondacks was known, advocated fresh air and rest. The Good Shepherd was a popular subject for Tiffany windows, and by 1910 there were seventy-three variants on the theme listed in the Partial List of Windows, published by Tiffany Studios.

Frederick Wilson, one of the leading designers associated with Tiffany Studios, is believed to have designed The Good Shepherd window at Stony Wold. This attribution is based on the similarities between the depiction of Christ and his flock and other designs that have been documented to Wilson. Stony Wold's Good Shepherd features the most extensive landscape of all the versions produced by Tiffany Studios. The horizontal composition complemented the architecture of the chapel and may depict the landscape of Lake Kushaqua.

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Agnes Fairchild Northrop, a Tiffany Studios designer, probably executed the watercolor for a landscape window with the flowering magnolia tree shown in Plate VI. With cypress trees on the left, a lake in the middle ground, and mountains in the distance, it is an asymmetric composition inspired by Japanese design. The drawing illustrates the first stage of the design process for a Tiffany window. Approved design drawings were transferred to a cartoon that indicated the lines for the lead. Next, a duplicate cartoon was cut with special double-bladed scissors equal to the width of the lead lines, leaving pieces that were then used as patterns for selecting and cutting the glass. As seen in The Good Shepherd window, Tiffany artisans achieved unusually subtle naturalistic effects--such as the reflection of sunlight on foliage, streaky skies, the texture of flower petals, or the impression of receding space--by combining different types of "ripple," "drapery," or "mottled" glass. The impression of distance was achieved with plating (using multiple layers of glass).

In 1984 the society received an incomparable collection of Tiffany Studios lamps through the bequest of Neustadt, who, with wife Hildegard (1910-1961), began collecting Tiffany lamps in 1935. From that time until his death, he amassed more than three hundred Tiffany lamps, windows, drawings, an archival photo album of lamps made at Tiffany Studios, and remaining glass from Tiffany's glass furnace and factory in Corona. (6) Tiffany glass became an obsession for the couple, and over the years Dr. Neustadt became both an avid collector and a noted authority. He presented the society with more than half of his Tiffany lamps, windows, and drawings, all of which are now housed in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture. With the addition of Tiffany artifacts and archival materials acquired from other sources, the society holds one of the largest collections of the works of Tiffany Studios.