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Vase

Manufacturer Tiffany & Co. American
1900
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 706
To celebrate the distinctive beauty of Native American art, Tiffany & Co.’s gifted designer G. Paulding Farnham created three highly unusual silver vessels for the firm’s grand prize-winning display at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. The present vase is inspired by the design of Navajo pottery, its hand-raised silver body ornamented with semi-precious stones sourced in America: turquoise-colored amazonite and bluish opals, as well as hundreds of freshwater pearls embedded in the "corn-cob" handles. Tiffany & Co. also exhibted the vase the following year at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition.

Paulding Farnham was one of Tiffany & Co.’s most talented designers of both jewelry and silver. He began an apprenticeship around 1878, was selected serve as assitant to the firm's artistic director Edward C. Moore in about 1885, and went on to become the firm’s head jewelry designer in 1891. Farnham continued to win gold medals at international fairs until departing the firm in 1904.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Vase
  • Manufacturer: Tiffany & Co. (American, New York, NY, 1837–present)
  • Date: 1900
  • Geography: Made in New York, New York, United States
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Silver, silver-gilt, freshwater baroque pearls, amazonite, opals.
  • Dimensions: H: 8 1/2 (21.6 cm); W: 9 3/4 in. (24.8 cm); WT: , 89 oz. (2768.188g)
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, and Richard and Gloria Manney Gifts, 2017
  • Object Number: 2017.162
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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