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Louis
Comfort Tiffany's library at the Bella Apartments, 48 East Twenty-sixth
Street, New York, designed 1878. From Artistic Houses: Being a
Series of Views of a Number of the Most Beautiful and Celebrated Homes
in the United States (New York, 1883) vol. 1, pt. 1, facing p.
3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library.
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In the late 1870s Tiffany began to focus on decorative work, particularly
the intermingling of all the arts in a complete, unified interior—a
philosophy in keeping with the basic tenets of the Aesthetic Movement. In
1878 he designed his first interior—for his own home in the Bella
Apartments at 48 East Twenty-sixth Street, where he lived with his wife
and three children. Hardly a surface was left plain: Oriental rugs were
scattered across floors; Japanese patterned papers were affixed to walls
and ceilings; carved and painted woodwork from India served as architectural
embellishment for windows; colored and leaded glass filled window openings;
and pictures and objects of various styles and media, including pottery,
porcelain, and metalwork from China and Japan, were arranged throughout.
Much of the furniture was remarkably simple, a foil for the proliferation
of ornament.
Louis
C. Tiffany: 1
2
3
4
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