spite the abundance of literature that exists regarding the career of Louis Comfort Tiffany, little serious attention has been paid thus far to his work in mosaic. This is in no small part determined by public perception of mosaic as an art form: dry, Byzantine and most often associated with ecclesiastical settings. Certainly the bulk of Tiffany’s work in this medium tends to confirm these impressions. The vast majority of his works in mosaic tend to be either located in churches, or else mimic the flattened Byzantine format despite their secular placement and themes. However, a small body of Tiffany's work radically broke with this tradition and sought, for the first time, to endow the medium with a sense of pictorial depth by experimenting with both linear and atmospheric perspective. The culmination of these experiments is evident in The Dream Garden mosaic [figure 1], installed in the Curtis Building in Philadelphia in 1916, about which Tiffany stated:

I trust it may stand in the years to come for a development in glassmaking and its application to art which will give to students a feeling that in this year of nineteen hundred and fifteen something worthy has been produced for the benefit of mankind, and that it may serve as an incentive for others to carry even further the true mission of mosaic. [1]

Although his work in mosaic dated back to 1889 with the interior design for the Havemeyer House, it is in the first two decades of the twentieth century that Tiffany seemed to solidify an artistic vision for mosaics based upon a faithful rendering of pictorial space. The Garden Landscape and Fountain (1905-15) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art [figure 2], and the Mosaic Curtain for the Mexican National Theatre (1911) [figure 3], two extant commissions which preceded The Dream Garden, can be used to trace this trajectory, demonstrating a continued reliance on the modernization of materials even while preserving a fervently anti-modern aesthetic sensibility.

One of the difficulties in examining any aspect of Tiffany’s career in terms of modernity is the inherent contradiction created by his revolutionary exploration of materials when compared to his rather conservative employment of them. His artistic career, which spanned six decades and saw numerous developments in the arts, remained almost anachronistically singular in its concerns. This longevity is the source, in many ways, of the tension between innovation and conservatism one finds in his oeuvre. What seemed an inspired, fresh approach to interiors and the materials used within them in the middle of the 1870s had, by the 1910s, become passé and regressive. The opulence of the aesthetic movement and its concern for color, pattern and texture remained a hallmark of Tiffany’s style despite the changing artistic environment around him. Tiffany’s artistic vision, as Martin Eidelberg has noted, “was firmly rooted in the historic revivalism which dominated much of mid-nineteenth-century design…inspiration [was] drawn from the experience of past European styles and from foreign cultures.”[2] Rather than adapt and respond to emerging modernity in the United States and abroad Tiffany seemed remarkably unfazed by the developments, although at times he decried them. A notable example is his 1895 commission by Siegfried Bing to translate one painting each by artists Bonnard, Vuillard, Toulouse Lautrec and Ranson into glass. Despite the completion of these windows, there is no discernable visual impact on Tiffany’s style, or in the productions of his staff.[3] Rather, he continued in the same vein, unmoved and unchanged by the art world around him. Beyond merely being attributable to his age or wealth, Tiffany’s rejection of modernism clearly relates to the aesthetic vision he had forged for himself during the early part of his career. Returning from Paris in 1913, for example, he stated, “the cubists are hammering away, but I think they will peter out,”[4] and later in the Evening Telegraph noted “they call it modern because it can’t be called art.”[5] Even the success of other glass artists at the turn of the century, like Blanche Ostertag and Orlando Giannini, whose Japonisme-tinged mosaic work garnered them critical acclaim at the Chicago Architectural Club exhibition of 1900, had no noticeable impact on Tiffany's work. He retained the sensibilities of the aesthetic era far longer than other artists of his time and rejected the penchant for flatness and two-dimensionality that modernism embraced.

The significant development that preceded and enabled these mosaics was Tiffany’s advancements in rendering perspective and atmosphere in stained-glass windows. His mastery of perspective in his landscape or ecclesiastical windows should be seen along the continuum of his experimentation in glass and constant desire to advance the medium. Aside from their material construction, the two mediums have little in common in terms of technique. At the time Tiffany began experimenting with glass, in fact, landscapes were believed to be a wholly unsuitable subject for that medium. As Harper’s New Monthly Magazine noted in 1879:

A glass-painting is incapable of those nice gradations of color and of light and shade which are indispensable for close imitations of nature, and for producing the full effect of atmosphere and distance. And even if this defect could be overcome, the lead and metal work would infallably ruin the picture. For these reasons it would be improper to select landscape, for instance, as the principal subject of a glass-painting.[6]

It was not a foregone conclusion that issues of perspective would be solved; rather, it should be understood that Tiffany was working to explore the full potential of the glass, relentlessly transforming the material and adapting its compositional possibilities. It is his spirit of inventiveness, rather than any particular achievement in window making, that should be emphasized. By 1899, for instance an art reviewer from the New York Times visiting the exhibition of Favrile glass at Tiffany’s New York Showroom noted that “some of the windows done in this glass as well as some of the other objects shown, have a play of color and a transparency and vitality which are remarkable. The windows in particular have really the effect of beautiful paintings, and in distance, atmosphere and color are hardly surpassed by the products of the brush.”[7] The main obstacle, however, in rendering perspective in mosaic, is the lack of plating or overlapping of segments that is possible in the windows. This trait is well illustrated by Tiffany's window Magnolia and Irises (c. 1908) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which he softened the outline of the mountain by placing the leading behind the primary glass of the pictorial plane. The magnolia blossoms, which seem to flutter on the branches, are the result of folded and manipulated glass. These blossoms, made from sheets of glass worked as it is cooling, project from the plane of the image—a trait that is not appropriate for mosaic.

While Tiffany demonstrated a willingness to defy the prevailing attitudes regarding the suitability of glass to landscape subjects in his landscape windows of the late 1890s and early 1900s, it is within the glass vessels of this period that he developed the formal vocabulary necessary to execute this vision. The arrival of Arthur John Nash in 1892 and the subsequent construction of the Tiffany Furnaces in Corona, Long Island shortly thereafter heralded a new era in Tiffany’s glass production that led to the development of his trademark Favrile glass. [8] Nash was a talented artisan who had been chief designer and manager of White House Glass Works in Wordsley, England beginning c.1875-80; he later joined Dennis Glass works c.1887-90. It is in this time period, in February 1892, that Tiffany dissolved Louis C. Tiffany, Incorporated and formed Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. The shift in manufacturing to Favrile glass in 1893 under the stewardship of Arthur J. Nash resulted in a radical new material whose possibilities changed the design of Tiffany mosaics. As a company brochure suggested, “through its limitless range of color, diversity of tone and endless variety of texture…this new glass… is particularly and peculiarly fitted for windows and mosaics.”[9] As the firm clearly acknowledged, “Tiffany Favrile Glass not only complies with every condition required in mosaic work, but it goes further and furnishes the mosaicist with an unlimited range of colors, so that he never has to resort, like the workers of old, to contrasting colors in order to supply the deficiency of his palette.”[10] By broadening the spectrum of color available, Tiffany’s new glass expanded the compositional and illusionistic options that could be executed within the medium.

The first tangible evidence of these developments evident in mosaic occurs in his Garden Landscape and Fountain which the Metropolitan Museum has dated between 1905-15. Despite the uncertainty in dating that the ten-year range implies, it would seem that this example is stylistically the earliest, and served as a precursor to the larger commissions to follow. The Garden Landscape explored pictorial space in a new way precisely because Tiffany was actively exploring the tonal and textural possibilities of his Favrile glass. As the writer H. L. Vivian noted, “Mr. Tiffany, in the making of Favrile glass, has achieved the delicate colours for glass mosaic demanded by modern taste, so that we have now a magnificent series of pinks, greys, grey-blues, greenish yellow and yellow. These tones were impossible to reproduce in the old mosaics where only the primary colours were used.”[11] Tiffany exploited the three main characteristics of his glass: clarity, color and surface, thus expanding the pictorial possibilities of the medium. The border for the fountain [figure 4] provides a remarkably clear illustration of these features and of the effects that are possible by altering them. Clarity as a feature gives the glass a sense of depth that recedes into the picture plane. One looks through the square, clear tesserae and notice the variation and texture of the gold foil that backs each piece. The clear casing over the gold gives a sense of depth to the color that is markedly different from the milky-green opalescent sections that surround them. These tesserae are pure color, and seem to sit on the plane of the picture, offering a neutral environment that neither pulls into the wall nor comes off of it. By contrast, the iridescence of the pieces surrounding the central squares actively asserts a sense of surface. The metallic glazes create a spatial illusion that draws these tones away from the picture plane and activates the surface when lit.

For some, though, the reliance on material detracted from the artistry of the creation. As critic and rival mosaicist Charles Rollinson Lamb noted, “as much as we may admire the beauty of the glass, the artistic use of it by the designer is the main thing to be considered. What should we think of a painter who should lay more emphasis on the grinding of his pigments than upon the composition of his picture?”[12] Professional rivalries aside, it is clear that Tiffany’s emphasis on the primacy of glass to the composition enabled him to achieve effects that were unavailable to artisans using lesser materials. By altering the combinations of these three traits - color, clarity and surface - Tiffany was able to realize a sense of pictorial illusion and atmospheric perspective previously unattained in mosaic.
Tiffany’s next major landscape mosaic, the Mosaic Theater Curtain (1911) for the Mexican National Theater, built upon the developments of the Garden Landscape and expanded them to a much larger scale. Not only was the physical size of the commission increased, but the expanded pictorial space allowed for a more dramatic representation of linear and atmospheric perspective. Instead of the shallow, measured recession into space evident in the Garden Landscape, one finds a foreground with fir trees “in bold relief” and colorful leaves of Bouganvillia and Aralia, which Tiffany insisted created a “picture truthfully portraying the charm of the country.”[13] The middle ground was essentially a void, and vast characterless plains lead the viewers’ eyes into the volcanoes in the distance. Depth was achieved by a softening of line and a reduction of color intensity. The quality of illusionistic depth that Favrile Glass could render allowed it, Tiffany Studios claimed, not only to equal but to surpass in effect the art of painting. As the studio’s promotional pamphlet suggested:

On viewing the curtain the spectator is impressed with the deftness of the artisans at the studios who executed this poem in glass. The minutest details, such as the stem of a flower or the needle of a fir tree are as realistically pictured as the glistening sides of the snow covered mountains. The completed curtain illustrates the decorative and ornamental possibilities of the Tiffany Favrile Glass. Its opalescence, iridescence, and the beauty of its finish lend a touch of reality to landscape scenes and pictures of natural beauty that cannot be obtained as effectively through other mediums.[14]

The curtain was displayed in Tiffany Studio’s New York showroom before it was shipped, where critics praised the effects not only of the glass, but of the artistry of the execution as well. A reviewer from The New York Times noted: “The artists who made the studies for the final composition are to be congratulated for the result of their labors. The picture, regarded simply as a decoration, irrespective of the feats of Craftsmanship involved, having great beauty and a moving quality of color.”[15] In addition, the segmented bronze work, which mimicked the effect of window mullions, further reinforced the notion of gazing into a picturesque landscape. Considering both the physical distance at which the audience was placed and the sharp break between the foreground and background compositional elements, the Mosaic Theater Curtain emphasized a very traditional idea of pictorial space in which the composition broke through the wall and became a window onto the outside world. Leslie Nash, who managed the Furnaces after his father Arthur John Nash, noted that “the curtain was so important to us that no book on Favrile glass could be written without mention of it.”[16]

Despite its smaller size of forty-nine feet by sixteen feet, The Dream Garden, installed in 1916 in the Curtis Building, Philadelphia, represented the culmination of Tiffany’s experiment with perspectival space in mosaic. Though the success of the project was paramount in Tiffany’s mind, the commission of the mosaic had more to do with providence than preference. During the construction of the building, the architect had originally consulted muralist Edwin A. Abbey, notable for his Quest for the Holy Grail (1890-1902) in the Boston Public Library, and commissioned him to decorate the entrance space.[17] Abbey had “selected his subject, made his preliminary studies, and was about to begin work on a mural when his death occurred.”[18] Maxfield Parrish, who was completing murals in the upper floors of the building and whose work was regularly featured in Curtis publications, was asked to undertake the commission but refused because of time constraints. It was eventually agreed that he would provide a small painting, which would then be executed in glass mosaic by Tiffany Studios. The successful exhibition and subsequent critical acclaim of the Mosaic Theatre Curtain were the determining factors in awarding the commission. As the company noted, “The exhibition of the curtain called forth expressions of the greatest enthusiasm from the artists and connoisseurs who saw it…here, then, obviously, was the solution to the difficulty which the mural had seemed to present to the Directors of the Curtis Publishing Company.”[19] The firing of the glass and construction of the mosaic continued from 1915 into 1916 and was supervised by Tiffany himself and his assistant Joseph Briggs.[20]

The Dream Garden represented for Tiffany the culmination of the poetic possibilities of glass mosaic, achieved through both relentless experimentation in the medium and a singular focus on creating illusionistic space. Ironically, while the previous examples of this trend were the result of Tiffany’s own artistic sensibility, or those of his studio, The Dream Garden’s success is inevitably linked to Maxfield Parrish’s style and its suitability to the medium. The hard lines and photographic quality of Parrish’s painting in conjunction with his penchant for glowing color made Favrile glass mosaic the perfect vehicle for The Dream Garden’s execution. In addition, the formal qualities of the work, such as the highly-detailed foreground and sweeping recession into space, mirrored the Mosaic Curtain’s composition and allowed Tiffany to readdress similar formal issues. However, unlike the Mosaic Curtain, The Dream Garden’s effect was predicated not merely on the imitation of nature but on endowing nature with romantic, glowing color. The combination of the romantic and realistic sensibilities of the mosaic were particularly pronounced when Tiffany displayed the work in his studios before it was installed in Philadelphia. As one reviewer noted, “one sits in the darkness to observe it, and the light behind the spectator is gradually increased until dawn is changed to noonday, then to late afternoon, then to moonlit night…The textures are all closely imitated, and, of course the changing light gives as in theatrical lighting the illusion of reality.”[21] These realistic effects were further heightened by a more complex and technically proficient handling of the glass.

While Tiffany had manufactured glass specifically for the Mosaic Theater Curtain, it is in The Dream Garden that these innovations come to fruition and crystallize the meeting of technical proficiency and artistic vision that remains the hallmark of the landscape mosaics. Each tesserae and sectilae performed distinct functions; creating optical illusions which represented material forms, mimicked the effects of atmosphere, and indicated the change of light across the scene. Whereas in the Garden Landscape Fountain Tiffany relied on segmented sectiliae for the blossoms of flowers, The Dream Garden featured numerous multi-colored blossoms constructed from a single piece of glass. [figure 5] Utilizing the ‘paperweight’ technique, which he had employed in his blown glass since the late 1890s, [figure 6] Tiffany was able to construct individual blossoms full of veining and shading without having to place mortar lines within the flower. At the left-hand side of the mosaic, the iridescent blue glass creates a pool of water which shimmers behind the plant forms, each leaf mottled and varied with hues ranging from an olive green to a deep red. Tiffany’s sensitivity to the effects of the color and texture of the glass are likewise evident in the construction of the main tree, whose branches reach convincingly back into the pictorial space—demonstrating a sense of recession and of volume not fully realized in his other landscape mosaics. The use of small sectilae among the branches allowed Tiffany to vary the orientation of the pieces as well as the color in order to create unparalleled effects of texture and shading which heightened the sense of pictorial depth. [figure 7] The same strategy can be seen in the distant mountains, whose varied color and complex structuring create the effect of the sun setting over jagged rocks. While color is the primary indicator of the position of the rocks, the varied pattern of the sectilae within both the light and dark sections of the mountains further amplifies the sense of structure within these color-fields. In addition to altering both the structure and color of the sectilae within the flowing water in the right-hand side of the mosaic, Tiffany manipulated the iridescence of the glass to create the impression of mist.[figure 8] This carefully crafted detail, created by changing both the color of the glass and its surface effect, lends further credence to the illusion of depth by allowing the viewer to look through the effervescence of the atmosphere to the solid forms of the rocks behind.

While the commission clearly demonstrates the peculiarly anti-modern aesthetic impulses of Tiffany Studios, it also serves to highlight their technical achievements in glass color, and in rendering pictorial depth. The New York Times stated that:

as a phase in the development in modern taste it cannot fail to be interesting. It is interesting, too, to reflect that so special and technical art as that practiced with the medium of glass should within our own generation have run the scale from the medieval type as shown in such work as Miss Armstrong did for the windows in Mrs. Belmont’s armory, through the La Farge glass to this amazing realism at the Tiffany Studios…[22]

The commission would prove to be the last landscape mosaic Tiffany executed and signified the culmination of his vision. Changing artistic trends, the outbreak of World War One, the subsequent decline of opportunities for such work, as well as his advancing age were likely factors that forced this cessation. Bankruptcy, a reduction in innovation and the general sense that perhaps he had outlived his artistic relevance marked his later years, and his death in 1933 precipitated the closing of his remaining industries.

Although Tiffany has been frequently aligned with Art Nouveau and an emerging modern sensibility, this relationship is tenuous at best, and ignores substantial parts of Tiffany's oeuvre in order to secure an American artist’s place within the cannon of early modern design.[23] As these mosaics demonstrate, Tiffany’s predilections turned more to the mimicry of nature than to an abstraction of line and form.[24] His continued innovation in glass was tempered either by a reliance on historical models, as seen in his early interiors and windows, or by the fidelity to nature one witnesses in his later windows and landscape mosaics. The artistic impulses that informed The Dream Garden were decidedly anti-modern and rejected whole-heartedly the dominant aesthetics that had emerged in Cézanne’s wake for nearly two decades. In reexamining these often-neglected works, a more precise picture of Tiffany’s artistic ambitions emerges which, despite its contradictions, is instructive in illustrating the full scope of artistic expression possible within the early modernist period. For patron and artist alike, The Dream Garden represented a physical and aesthetic retreat from the frenetic pace of the modern world.