Louis Comfort Tiffany and members of his studio worked in nearly every conceivable medium of the decorative arts. Thus, it is not surprising that some of the objects they produced were more commercially successful than others and that their survival rate is often relative to total production. A case in point is Tiffany's art pottery. Between approximately 1904 and 1914 craftsmen at Tiffany Furnaces in Corona, New York, created only about two thousand pieces of art pottery, making it today among the rarest of Tiffany productions in any medium. The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida, has one of the largest concentrations of Tiffany objects in the country, including about one hundred pieces of art pottery. Many of these are being exhibited in a special exhibition entitled Sculpting Nature: The Favrile Pottery of L.C. Tiffany, which is on view from February 3 through January 9, 2005.
Tiffany long had an interest in ceramics and was an avid collector of art pottery. As early as 1898 he began experimenting with ceramics. Two years later in the showroom of Tiffany Studios he exhibited a collection of innovative French pottery he had seen at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1902 an article in Keramic Studio predicted: "Mr. Tiffany, the maker of the beautiful Favrile glass, is experimenting in pottery, and it is very probable that he is not following beaten paths and that we will see sooner or later some striking and artistic potteries come out of his kilns." Indeed, two years later visitors to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis were treated to a display of Tiffany's ceramic wares. Tiffany called his output Favrile pottery, no doubt wanting to capitalize on the enormous popularity of his glass of the same name.
As in his other endeavors, many of these vessels, both in their form and decoration are drawn from nature. The pieces were slip cast, and in some cases they were made in plaster molds taken of actual plants, vegetables, and flowers after they had been frozen in shellac. The Celery Vase (illustrated at lower left) has such verisimilitude that it could have been made using this process.
In its catalogue Tiffany and Company stated that its ceramics were "entirely different from anything heretofore shown in table lamps, vases, jars and other pieces." Various types of glazes were offered, among them: mat, iridescent, and transparent with a yellowish cast, which was the most common. About 1910 a glaze called Favrile bronze was introduced. Involving electroplating and subsequent patination, the resulting wares looked more like metal than pottery. At some point around 1914, Tiffany and Company ceased making pottery, which had never attained the popularity of Favrile glass. This exhibition, which unfortunately does not have a catalogue, offers a wonderful opportunity to see a broad range of these objects, nine of which have recently been acquired by the museum.
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