TIFFANY STUDIOS | "MILLEFIORI" VASE

Percy A. Joseph Liquidating, New York, Favrile Glass, Desk Sets, Lamps, Furniture, Antique Oriental Rugs of Louis C. Tiffany Studios Corporation, November 1936

Edward Ingraham, Bristol, Connecticut

Macklowe Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 2012

Paul E. Doros, The Tiffany Collection of the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Norfolk, VA, 1978, p. 108, no. 149 (for a related vase from the same series)

Alastair Duncan, Tiffany At Auction, New York, 1981, p. 21, no. 32 (for a related example from the same series)

Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany's Glass, Bronzes, Lamps: A Complete Collector's Guide, New York, 1989, p. 53 (for the present lot illustrated in the Tiffany store room)

Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany: The Collected Works of Robert Koch, Atglen, PA, 2001, p. 197 (for a related example from the same series in the collection of the Morse Museum, Winter Park, Florida)

Martin Eidelberg, Tiffany Favrile Glass and the Quest of Beauty, New York, 2007, p. 41 (for a related example from the same series)

Louis Comfort Tiffany: Couleurs et Lumière, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, 2010, p. 153, cat. 115 (for a related example from the same series)

Paul Doros, The Art Glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany, New York, 2013, pp. 47 and 209 (for a related example from the series)

David A. Hanks, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Treasures from the Driehaus Collection, New York, 2013, p. 115 (for a related example from the same series)

Timeless Beauty, The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Atglen, PA, 2016, p. 99 (for a related example from the same series)

This lot is offered together with the original bill of sale from Percy A. Joseph Liquidating, New York.

"Millefiori" was a decorative technique first used by the ancient Romans. Thin rods of different colored glass were fused together to form a single, thicker rod which was then cut into very thin slices. A gather of hot glass, while attached to the blowpipe, was next rolled over these slices and the glass was then expanded and shaped into its desired size and form. This was a procedure that was particularly well suited for blown Favrile vases and was employed by Tiffany’s glasshouse throughout most of its history.

The glassblowers soon came to realize that the process was an ideal method for evoking Tiffany’s love of flowers and iridescent vases of transparent blue and yellow glass were occasionally enhanced with small white millefiori blossoms. In late 1901, probably in preparation for the firm’s exhibition at the Prima Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna to be held in Turin, Italy the following year, the glasshouse developed an opaque glass in a highly unusual shade of green. Between ten and fifteen vases using this glass were created and most feature a light multi-colored iridescence, folded-over rim, dark yellow-khaki leafage and complex cream-colored, star-shaped flowers scattered over the entire body. This particular example is unusual in that some of the leaves are in relief. The success of the design is indicated by the fact that one of the vases was featured in Turin and illustrated in several period publications.

The original owner of the vase, who purchased it at the 1936 Tiffany Studios liquidation auction, should also be mentioned. Edward Ingraham (1887-1972) was the great-grandson of Elias Ingraham, an early American clockmaker who, in 1857, founded the E. Ingraham Company in Bristol, Connecticut. After graduating Yale in 1910, Edward began working for the clockmaking company and was its president from 1927 to 1954. The public library in Bristol is named in his honor.

PAUL DOROS