TIFFANY STUDIOS | “GOOSENECK” VASE

I have always felt that walking into our home with Tiffany lamps glowing is like being in a garden. At first our Tiffany lamps were set in a stark modern gray and white home. We had the Tiffany glass pieces in cabinets out of the reach of our small children. Afterwards we built our home using Art Nouveau furniture and fabrics where the Tiffany lamps complemented each setting and the vases were nestled within cabinets produced in the same period. We were surrounded by beauty.

We were told when we began collecting that we were only temporary custodians of these works of art and that at some point others would have the great gift of owning them. That time has come. We are now offering our personal collection of over fifty years for sale at Sotheby’s for others to enjoy.

Barbara Macklowe

Louis Tiffany traveled extensively and made numerous visits to the Middle East. These trips influenced his aesthetics in numerous ways, including some of the shapes utilized by his glasshouse. This is particularly evident in the Favrile vases that are today referred to as “Goosenecks.”

Silver rosewater sprinklers in this form first appeared in India during the 16^th Century. The model was replicated in both silver and glass extensively throughout Persia 300 years later and it is extremely likely that Tiffany was familiar with these later examples through his travels. But while the Persians generally made their vases in basic transparent colored glass, those made by Tiffany Studios are either opaque or, if transparent, enhanced with iridescence, a tooled decoration, or both.

The vases offered here are particularly fine examples, with their curvaceous necks and pointed oval rims. Of green-tinted glass with a delicate opalescent white inner lining, both are decorated with a beautifully executed pulled-feather design and further enhanced with a multi-hued iridescence. Deceptively simple in appearance, Tiffany’s blown Favrile version of the rosewater sprinkler required all of the glassblower’s skills and this, together with the fragility of the slender neck, probably accounts for their relative rarity.