ALICE COONEY FRELINGHUYSEN: My name is Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen and I'm the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wong Curator of American Decorative Arts. These are two mosaic fragments that were originally part of the decorations of the façade of the Tiffany Studios Showroom that was located on Madison Avenue, Midtown, New York. So it said Tiffany Studios, and then it also had the address, 347-355 Madison Avenue. And if you look closely, it's just extraordinary glass--wonderful, kind of, mottled and marbleized glass looking like precious stones, precious figured marbles. Particularly the background glass for the lettering, very deep, almost black glass, veined with white and blue and . . . the whole was incorporated into a Renaissance-type design called Cosmati design: you see the interlaced borders and the central decorative element in the middle there. Louis Comfort Tiffany was the son of Charles Tiffany, who was the founder of Tiffany and Company, the jewelry, and silver, and luxury goods store that was founded in 1835, and it's still carrying on today, on Fifth Avenue. But Louis was a true artist; his father supported him in his artistic work, and he, in the late 1870's, moved into decorative work. Glass would be his true métier, whether it was in leaded glass windows, lampshades, mosaic, wonderful glass vessels. I think it's most appropriate that these mosaic fragments that were announcing Tiffany's showrooms would be installed here, and would be one of the first things that a visitor sees when they walk into the courtyard, because our courtyard is really full of extraordinary important, fantastic examples of large-scale architectural work by Tiffany. There four leaded-glass windows, for example. There is the wonderful garden mosaic and fountain, and the entrance to Louis Tiffany's country estate on Long Island, Laurelton Hall.