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By the early 1890s Tiffany had proved himself a skilled glassmaker,
developing a method whereby different colors were blended together in the molten state,
achieving the subtle effects that he used mainly in stained-glass windows. The application
of this technique to three-dimensional form did not take place until 1893, when Tiffany
founded his own glass furnace at Corona, Queens, New York. Under the direction of Arthur J.
Nash, who mastered the medium as manager for the firm of Thomas Webb in Stourbridge, England,
before coming to America, the new company began to produce ornamental vessels. These Favrile
vases, as Tiffany christened them, soon earned him international acclaim after they were first
exhibited in his showroom in 1893.
In turning to vessels, Tiffany was responding to changing
tastes in the medium that took place here and abroad during the last quarter
of the nineteenth century. Beginning with the 1876 Centennial Exhibition
in Philadelphia, the production of art glass soared to new heights. The
collecting of glass vessels from ancient Rome, the Islamic world, Venice,
and Bohemia stimulated the public's appetite for novel forms, colors, textures,
and decorations, and glassmakers, including Tiffany, copied them to meet
the growing demand. In addition, the highly skilled craftsmanship of the
art glass being manufactured at Stourbridge and the rich coloristic effects
in the objects made by Emile Gallé in Nancy, France, would further inspire
him. Tiffany combined his talents as a colorist, naturalist, and designer
with the technology that he had developed for his windows to produce blown
glass with surfaces, hues, and forms that were totally new. After manipulating
the varicolored glass, the final form was often fumed with metallic oxides
to achieve rainbow iridescence. He first gave his glass the name "Fabrile,"
derived from the Old English fabrile, meaning "hand-wrought," to signify
the hand-blown quality, the connotation being that each piece was unique.
The name was changed by 1894 to the more elegant-sounding "Favrile."
Favrile
glass introduction:
1, 2
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