Louis Comfort Tiffany

Tiffany & Company in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY was born in 1848. The New York City he grew up in was very different from the one we know today…

Awards

Tiffany Works in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The son of Charles Tiffany, the founder of the great New York jewellers and goldsmiths Tiffany and Co, Louis Comfort Tiffany started as a painter and then worked as an interior decorator before taking an interest in glassmaking. In 1893, he set up the first glassworks known under his name, which produced many objects, stained-glass windows and light fittings over the following decades. He is particularly known for creating "favrile glass" which became the hallmark of Tiffany glass creations. "Favrile" is a 17th-century term meaning "belonging to an artist or his art", a forceful reminder of the importance of crafts in this period…