Tiffany Studios

Janet Zapata, Short Hills, New Jersey, 2000

Hugh McKean, The "Lost" Treasures of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Atglen, PA, 1980, p. 223, fig. 220 (for a related textile)

Textiles and fabrics frequently appeared in Tiffany’s interior designs, beginning with the work completed by his initial company, Louis C. Tiffany and the Associated Artists. The firm’s first major commission was a drop curtain for the Madison Square Theater that was designed by Tiffany and constructed by Candace Wheeler and her team in 1880. The curtain was met with critical acclaim and artistic fabrics and textiles became a staple of the company.

This decorative element continued with Tiffany’s future business organizations. The Tiffany Glass Company offered fabrics as part of their services as early as 1887. The Associated Artists continued to produce much of the material and Tiffany supplemented their work by purchasing “collection[s] of artistic fabrics in Europe and the East.” These sources, however, prevented him from the design and quality control he was accustomed to in the other facets of his enterprises.

This was rectified in late 1904. A Tiffany Studios advertisement appearing in Good Housekeeping proudly announced:

In addition to their well-known work in glass, metal, mosaic, stone and wood, the announcement of a new and exclusive Tiffany production will be of interest to all who appreciate the distinctive note in decoration. For a number of years, the Tiffany Studios have been experimenting under the direction of Mr. Louis C. Tiffany with hand printing in colors to produce an effect that will give the distinction and quality to fabrics that have been so wonderfully expressed in Favrile Glass. The labor has been successful, and the color tones of the Tiffany fabrics give the variety, the depth and the lights and shadows which are in beautiful combination. The work, being done by hand, has individuality and is permanent.

Surviving samples of the fabric are exceedingly rare, with the only other known examples being in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. Those textiles, as well as this bolt, are velvets with a low, soft pile and a shimmering stylized floral pattern that changes in hues and tones as the light changes throughout the day, a quality similar to that of Tiffany’s iridescent Favrile glass.

–PD