olor & Light Exploring the Tiffany Exhibit by Beth Golden


mfort Tiffany could have simply created beautiful pieces with the s and techniques available to him when he began his foray into glasswork after being introduced to glass creation just a few years earlier at Empire ass Works in Brooklyn. But in his highly inquisitive and artistically ng eyes, those resources became only primary colors in a palette he ontinue to build upon almost obsessively. He had grown up around the g jewels and gems of his father’s famed New York City store – Tiffany & d was intrigued by the way light filtered through drinking glasses, jelly wine bottles. As a young man setting out to be a painter and travelling Middle East, he had seen rich and colorful Moroccan tapestries, glowing n jeweled cabochons, and iridescent Roman glass – a style that would asting presence in his work. Following the traditional path of aspiring merican artists, Tiffany trained in Paris under the tutelage of French and met landscape master Leon-Adolphe Auguste Belly, who, from his vels to the Near East, imported exotic and heroic elements into his work ld visuals of Romanticism before it eventually gave way to the more , dreamy qualities of Impressionism.


ffany’s oil paintings depicting scenes from his excursions show his keen n to the play of light on the gold of sand and stucco, rather than the hues and rich ornamentation prevalent in the works of other Orientalists, nation with the colors and textures of the world would play a starring oughout his life in his interior design and his quest to create an infinite glass textiles. This appreciation would be further reinforced by his


Photos courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.


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