Above: Fathers of the Church, ca. 1892
Below: Photos by the Corning Museum of Glass
Tiffany’s Glass Mosaics
During the more than 30 years of his mosaic production, Tiffany approached mosaics with the same unbridled creativity and glass-making techniques that characterized his work in leaded and blown glass. Using a rich variety of materials, including multicolored opalescent glass and shimmering iridescent glass, accented with three-dimensional glass “jewels,” Tiffany’s innovations established a bold new aesthetic for mosaics and contributed a uniquely American character to the centuries-old art form.
Organized in partnership with The Corning Museum of Glass, Tiffany’s Glass Mosaics features nearly 50 works dating from the 1890s to the 1920s, from intimately scaled mosaic fancy goods to large-scale mosaic panels composed of thousands of individual pieces of glass. Drawing on The Neustadt’s unparalleled archive of Tiffany glass, the exhibition also includes more than 1,000 original examples of colored sheet glass and glass “jewels” made for specific mosaic commissions.
The exhibition reveals the process of creating a mosaic at Tiffany’s studios—through detailed watercolor design drawings, sample panels, and examples of completed works. Visitors will gain insight into the labor-intensive processes, including the selection of individual pieces of glass, which played a vital role in the success of the final artwork.
In addition, visitors will also experience some of Louis C. Tiffany’s most important mosaic commissions still in situ through a high-definition “Mosaic Theater,” specially created using new photography by the Corning Museum of Glass. Multiple video monitors showcase stunning details of these important artworks, allowing visitors to appreciate their design, glass selection, and craftsmanship like never before.
