How Tiffany Favrile Glass Gives Light a Surface
A peacock vase, a flower-shaped vessel and a lava-like bowl reveal how Tiffany's glassmakers turned color, texture and light into the structure of an object.
The peacock seems to have left its feathers inside the glass. In a vase made by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company between 1893 and 1896, fine lines rise through a narrow neck and spread across a broad, fan-shaped mouth. Blue eyes punctuate the greenish surface. Pink and gold highlights gather between them. Even in a photograph, the object feels poised between a vessel and a display of plumage. Its shape gives the decorative pattern somewhere to unfold.
Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, peacock-pattern Vase, 1893–96. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. O. Havemeyer, 1896. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the vase stands just under thirty-six centimeters high. It entered the collection in 1896 through the Havemeyers' gift of more than forty Tiffany objects, only three years after the company began making decorative blown-glass vessels. Its interest lies in how closely structure and appearance cooperate: the neck gathers the lines, the lip releases them, and the sheen makes the surface seem less settled than the silhouette.
Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, Vase, 1893–96, a different Favrile example. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. O. Havemeyer, 1896. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
A trade name for many surfaces
That relationship is a useful way into Favrile. Louis Comfort Tiffany's name has become shorthand for colored glass, but these vessels reward looking beyond a recognizable palette. Some invite light to travel through their bodies. Others meet it with a metallic glow or a roughened skin. A bowl can look dense and geological; a flower-shaped vase can appear almost weightless. The workshop treated glass as a material with many possible optical and physical personalities.
First image. Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, flower-shaped Vase, 1893–96; a Met example, distinct from Corning’s Pansy vase. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. O. Havemeyer, 1896. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Second image. Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, Vase, 1893–96. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. O. Havemeyer, 1896. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Favrile itself was a trade name with a wider reach than iridescence alone. The Corning Museum of Glass records that Tiffany registered the trademark on November 13, 1894, and used it for all the factory's glass. This matters when looking at individual pieces. Their shared designation does not mean that every vessel was made with an identical recipe or given the same surface treatment. The name brought varied experiments into one recognizable body of work.
First image. Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, Vase, 1893–96. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. O. Havemeyer, 1896. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Second image. Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, Vase, 1893–96. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. O. Havemeyer, 1896. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Corning's Pansy vase, made around 1913, makes the work at the furnace unusually legible. The museum credits glassmaker John Hollingsworth with first making the form and describes a specific route to its blue iridescence: tin chloride was sprayed onto hot glass, which was then reheated in an atmosphere with reduced oxygen. The effect depended on controlled treatment of the material. Corning also notes that Tiffany's glassmakers were encouraged to experiment, placing skilled workshop decisions alongside the artistic director's ambitions.
Material and movement
A different vessel at the Musée d'Orsay, dated 1900, combines gold flecks, white filigree and a convolvulus motif. The museum connects Tiffany's use of metal salts in molten glass to his interest in the lustrous appearance of antique glass. Here the floral pattern has company within the material. Flecks and pale threads complicate the view, asking the eye to move between the vessel's outline and the different kinds of marks distributed across it.
First image. Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, Vase, 1893–96. Related Met example, distinct from the Musée d’Orsay vase discussed above. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of H. O. Havemeyer, 1896. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Second image. Louis C. Tiffany / Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, lily-pad Vase, ca. 1900. Related Met example, distinct from the Musée d’Orsay vase. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Robert and Gladys Koch, 1999. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Its museum history also shows how quickly this American glass traveled. The vase was purchased for the Musée du Luxembourg in 1901 from the Paris dealer Siegfried Bing, whose gallery helped bring international contemporary design to France. An object associated with the furnace in New York could become part of a French public collection within a year of its recorded date. Favrile's distinctive appearance was supported by an equally consequential network of patrons, dealers and institutions.
The limits of a single visual definition become clearer in a Tiffany bowl dated 1908 and discussed in the Met's glass collection bulletin. Thick, smooth gold areas meet rough black surfaces, while the irregular form suggests molten lava. The bowl makes texture part of the encounter with light. A bright passage can seem more concentrated beside a dark, coarse one. Its appeal is tactile even when the visitor's only permitted contact is looking.
Looking through the finish
In the same publication, a nearly colorless vase takes another direction. Blue-white opalescence collects at its rim; Queen Anne's lace and green lily pads provide its botanical decoration. The museum tentatively attributes its delicate cutting to Fredolin Kreischmann, a glassworker who had previously worked in England. Set beside the lava-like bowl, it reveals the breadth hidden by the familiar word Tiffany. Transparency, cutting, roughness and metallic luster all had a place in the vocabulary.
First image. Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, Vase, ca. 1895–98, probably cut by Fredolin Kreischmann. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, William Cullen Bryant Fellows Gifts, 1997. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
Second image. Alternate view of the same Vase, ca. 1895–98, Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, probably cut by Fredolin Kreischmann. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, William Cullen Bryant Fellows Gifts, 1997, 1997.409. Public Domain. Collection · CC0
These objects suggest a slower way of looking at decorative glass. Follow the rim before the motif. Notice where a highlight widens, where a dark area interrupts it, and where the body allows a glimpse through. Then return to the whole vessel. In Favrile, light is part of how the object is understood, helping a fan become plumage or an uneven bowl suggest cooling rock. The material gives that reading its particular force.
Nine objects are shown in ten museum photographs; the final pair shows two views of the same vase. Images retain their original proportions. The Met Open Access policy
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