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LOUIS C. TIFFANY (1848-1933)
1848
Louis Comfort Tiffany is born February 18, in New York, to Harriet Olivia Avery Young
(1817–1897) and Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812–1902), founder of Tiffany & Co.
1863-1865
Tiffany attends Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and studies
under Tonalist landscape painter George Inness (1825–1894).
1866
Tiffany is admitted to antique classes at the National Academy of Design.
1868-1869
He travels to Paris to study with Léon-Charles Adrien Bailly (b. 1826). Tiffany meets
painter Léon Adolphe Auguste Belly (1827–1877), who specializes in Orientalist genre
scenes.
1869
Back in New York, Tiffany lives in a studio in the Association Building (YMCA), 52
East Twenty-third Street at Fourth Avenue, until 1878.
1870
Between July 1870 and February 1871, Tiffany travels through Europe and North Africa:
London, Paris, Madrid, Málaga, Gibraltar, Tanger, Malta, Sicily, Naples, Amalfi,
Sorrento, Alexandria, Cairo, Tunisia, Algeria, Rome and Florence.
1872
Tiffany marries Mary (May) Woodbridge Goddard (1846–1884). They will have four
children together.
1878
Tiffany exhibits an oil painting and two watercolours at the Paris Exposition universelle.
He moves into the newly completed Bella Apartments, at Forty-eight East Twenty-sixth,
Street, and begins a career in interior decoration.
1881
Tiffany is granted three patents for glass-making and makes an agreement with the
glasshouse Louis Heidt and Company, Brooklyn, to obtain opalescent glass for windows
made by the firm Louis C. Tiffany and Company. He merges his companies to form
Louis C. Tiffany and Company, Associated Artists, 333–335 Fourth Avenue. The firm
completes commissions for some of New York’s leading business magnates. Tiffany’s
decorating company will continue under different names until his death.
1884
Mary (May) Woodbridge Goddard Tiffany (Tiffany’s wife) dies.
1885
Tiffany moves from the Bella Apartments to a residence in the recently completed
building financed by his father, Charles Lewis Tiffany, on Madison Avenue and Seventysecond
Street.
1886
Tiffany marries Louise Wakeman Knox (1851–1904), also a painter. They will have four
children together.
1889
Tiffany travels to Paris, where he exhibits one painting at the Exposition universelle. He
visits Émile Gallé’s glass factory in Nancy.
1892
By 1892–93, Tiffany opens his own glass furnace in Corona, Long Island, where workers
make blown Favrile glass vases under superintendent Arthur J. Nash (1849–1934).
1893
At the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Tiffany Glass and Decorating
Company is awarded fifty-four medals for its display of stained-glass windows, glass
mosaics and decorative furnishings in a grandiose chapel.
1894
Siegfried Bing, owner of the gallery L’Art Nouveau, Paris, visits Tiffany Glass and
Decorating Company in New York; he becomes Tiffany’s exclusive distributor in
Europe.
Tiffany registers “Favrile” as a trademark for his handcrafted glass with the US patent
office.
1895
Tiffany exhibits twenty examples of Favrile glass and a series of windows made from
designs by eleven French artists at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts,
Paris.
1899
Tiffany’s glass is on display in the exhibition organized by Bing at Grafton Galleries,
London. Tiffany exhibits his blown glass at the Mir iskusstva International Art
Exhibition, St. Petersburg, at the museum of Baron Stieglitz’s School of Applied Arts.
1900
At the Paris Exposition universelle, Tiffany exhibits Favrile glass, leaded-glass windows,
lamps, mosaics and enamels in a gallery adjacent to the one occupied by his father’s firm,
Tiffany & Co.
1901
Tiffany wins a grand prize at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He
also wins prizes at international expositions in Dresden and St. Petersburg, and the
following year in Turin.
1902
Charles Lewis Tiffany dies, and he leaves a controlling interest in Tiffany & Co. to his
son, Louis C. Tiffany, who becomes vice-president of the firm.
Tiffany purchases property in Oyster Bay, Long Island. During the next three years, he
designs and builds Laurelton Hall, his eighty-four-room house, surrounded by gardens,
terraces, fountains and pools.
1904
Tiffany wins a gold medal at the Louisiana Purchase International Exposition in Saint
Louis; this is the first year he exhibits his own jewellery.
Louise Wakeman Knox Tiffany (Tiffany’s second wife) dies of cancer.
1907
Tiffany assumes the role of Tiffany & Co.’s chief jewellery designer, and moves his art
jewellery production from Tiffany Studios to Tiffany & Co., at Fifth Avenue and Thirtyseventh
Street.
1916
Saturday, February 19
Tiffany hosts a sixty-eighth birthday luncheon party for himself, a masque called “The
Quest of Beauty,” and a retrospective exhibition of his works in oil paint and
watercolour, glass, iron and textiles for three hundred guests at the Tiffany Studios
showroom on Madison Avenue.
1918
First meeting of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, which will establish an art school
at Laurelton Hall.
1932
Tiffany Studios, at 391 Madison Avenue, files for bankruptcy.
1933
On January 17, eighty-four-year-old Tiffany dies of pneumonia at his Seventy-second
Street residence.
1938
Liquidation of Louis C. Tiffany Studios Corporation. Contents of the studios are
auctioned prior to demolition of the building.
Chronology by:
Barbara Veith
Research Associate
Department of American Decorative Arts
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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Header: Louis C. Tiffany (1848–1933), Attributed to Clara Driscoll (1861–1944), Dragonfly Lamp, Before 1906,
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, Gift of Sydney and Frances Lewis, Photo Katherine Wetzel
© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Background image and title (left): Louis C. Tiffany (1848–1933), Magnolia Window, About 1900, The State
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Photo The State Hermitage Museum, Yuri Molodkovets
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