Design for Chancel wall for First Reformed Church, Albany, NY

Louis C. Tiffany American
Tiffany Studios

Not on view

In 1910, the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany commissioned Tiffany Studios to redecorate the sanctuary of their historic house of worship. A contemporary newspaper recounts that Tiffany supplied "chancel furniture…especially designed of Flemish oak to correspond with" the church's seventeenth-century pulpit, sent to the colonies from the Netherlands. The glittering chancel wall was painted in a dark "old-gold" color, following a pattern adapted from a fifteenth-century tapestry. Tiffany Studios also supplied chandeliers, stained-glass windows, and stenciled borders. In the 1940s, the church was redecorated and the Tiffany Studios decoration was lost except for the furnishings. Tiffany's work on the Dutch Church in Albany epitomizes his relationship with the Colonial Revival movement, as it suggests his willingness to consider the past, while creating his own distinctive style.

Design for Chancel wall for First Reformed Church, Albany, NY, Louis C. Tiffany (American, New York 1848–1933 New York), Watercolor, pen and ink, aluminum wash, and graphite on wove paper, American

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