Louis Comfort Tiffany

Louis Comfort Tiffany 1848-1933, American artist, decorative designer, and art patron, b. New York City; son of Charles Lewis Tiffany. He studied painting with Inness and in Paris and painted oils and watercolors in Europe and Morocco. Later he established the interior-decorating firm in New York City which came to be known as Tiffany Studios. The firm specialized in favrile glass work, characterized by iridescent colors and natural forms in the art nouveau style. This work ranged from lamps and vases to stained-glass windows and a huge glass curtain for the national theater in Mexico City. His lamps became enormously popular in the 1960s and were widely imitated. In 1919, Tiffany established the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, which presently provides study and travel grants for art students. Tiffany is represented in the Metropolitan Museum by a painting, Snake Charmer at Tangiers, in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) by several glass pieces, and most completely in the Neustadt Museum of Tiffany Art (New York City).

Bibliography: See E. Neustadt's The Lamps of Tiffany (1971).

Tiffany, Louis Comfort (1848–1933) US painter and designer, leader of the art nouveau style in the USA. In 1878, he formed an interior decorating firm, which by 1900 was known as Tiffany Studios. It specialized in what he termed ‘favrile’ glass – freely shaped iridescent glasswork, sometimes combined with various metals.

Tiffany, Louis Comfort (b New York, 18 Feb. 1848; d New York, 17 Jan. 1933). American designer, interior decorator, and architect, his country's most famous exponent of the Art Nouveau style. The son of a prosperous jeweller, he initially trained as a painter, but in the 1870s he turned more to the decorative arts and founded an interior decorating business in 1879. Tiffany became famous above all for his highly distinctive glass vases and lamps, but until about 1900 his firm was better known for stained glass and mosaic work (it did interiors for many socially prominent New Yorkers as well as for clubs). Most of his architectural work has perished, including his own mansion on Long Island, Laurelton Hall (1903–5), which was regarded as his masterpiece; however, its main entrance survived the fire that destroyed the building in 1957 and is now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Tiffany was also an art patron and established a foundation that provided study and travel grants for students.