Tiffany Studios

Christie's New York, November 14-15, 1980, lot 376

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany at Auction, New York, 1981, p. 158, fig. 408

Patricia Pongracz, ed., Louis C. Tiffany and the Art of Devotion, exh. cat., New York, 2012, p. 159 (for the present lot illustrated)

Louis C. Tiffany and the Art of Devotion, Museum of Biblical Art, New York, October 2012 - January 2013

Tiffany Studios was the perhaps the most predominate and prestigious American manufacturer of leaded glass windows from approximately 1895 to 1920. A church member who donated a Tiffany window was certain that it would beautify the sanctuary as well as impress his or her fellow congregants. Tiffany Studios, however, failed to win every commission it competed for. Perhaps the design failed to meet with the donor’s approval, a different form of memorial was chosen or, as was occasionally the case, the benefactor preferred a less expensive option.

Whatever the reason, the Te Deum Laudamus window based on the magnificent cartoon offered here was not realized for its original destination. Designed by Frederick Wilson, head of Tiffany’s Ecclesiastical Department, the window was initially intended to be constructed for a church in Germantown, Pennsylvania. There is, however, no record of a Harrison Memorial by Tiffany Studios ever being installed in any Philadelphia church.

That did not necessarily mean that a Te Deum Laudamus window based on Wilson’s design was never constructed. In 1906, a remarkably similar window, reportedly costing an astonishing $14,000, was installed in the First Presbyterian Church, Syracuse, New York. The major difference is that the actual window is comprised of six panels rather than four, probably enlarged to fit the existing opening in the church. The window, now in the permanent collection of the Gelman Stained Glass Museum (San Juan, Texas), depicts over 100 figures and at the time was considered to “mark the summit of achievement in the stained glass working art, besides being one of the largest memorial windows ever constructed.”

–PD