Persian, Glass flasks, c. 1885, and Louis Comfort Tiffany, Glass flask, 1896
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IMAGE LIST | ACTIVITIES
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While at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Tiffany saw two Persian rosewater sprinklers of blue glass. Fine ridges, some colored, spiraled up and around the graceful swan-neck shapes, revealing the movement of the molten material as the vases were formed at the end of a glassblower's pipe. They inspired the American artist to create his own version.
These pieces demonstrate in a direct way how the arts of Islam influenced art nouveau. Islamic glass, textiles, woodcarvings, and inlaid metalware provided a rich vocabulary of arabesques and sinuous form. The designs were organic, drawing on nature, but simplified into linear pattern. For Tiffany, who had traveled in North Africa as a young man, Islamic designs would become a major source of inspiration. His swan-necked sprinkler is not a slavish imitation, however. Notice in particular how its decoration differs from the Persian pieces. In a technique Tiffany used often, the natural swelling of the vase literally inflates the pattern of lines, making the shape and its decoration an organic whole.
Tiffany is an acknowledged master of glass and looked to many different glass traditions for inspiration. In addition to Islamic shapes, he also adapted the hobs of Renaissance drinking cups and the iridescence of glass buried for centuries. (Archaeological glass acquires a metallic sheen from minerals in the soils around it.) Tiffany's most important source of inspiration, however, was nature -- perhaps most famously for what we today call "Tiffany lamps." He treated nature in a more straightforwardly naturalistic way than most of his European counterparts, neither abstracting it as strongly as Van de Velde, for example, nor swathing it with the poetics of Gallé.
Tiffany said his search for a new type of glass occupied him for thirty years. He patented the result, which let him produce shimmery, kaleidoscopic patterns without resorting to, as he said, "paints, etching, or burning, or otherwise treating the surface." Material and decoration were one. Tiffany originally called his glass Fabrile -- from a root meaning to make -- but soon changed it to the more elegant sounding Favrile.
Learning Activities
Art
• Learn more about Islamic art.
• Visit a glassblower.
• Assemble a portfolio of contemporary glass artists.
Humanities
• Research the origin and development of the modern art museum.
• Consider the role of museums for art students today.