Vase in Celtic encircled birds pattern
Manufacturer Tiffany Studios
Louis C. Tiffany’s studios worked in virtually every decorative media. He introduced pottery into the firm’s oeuvre shortly after he had witnessed the almost revolutionary artistic ceramics shown in Paris in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle. He unveiled his new Favrile pottery, as he called it, in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in St. Louis, where they received accolades. Women played an important role in the design and production of Tiffany’s pottery, as they had for lampshades and enamels.
While most of Tiffany’s enamels are organic in inspiration, the design of this vase, or possibly a lampbase, was medieval, an historical period of which designers in the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts modes were much enamored. Here, the low-relief design is of Romanesque-inspired interlocking circles, each of which encloses a medievalized bird or pair of birds.
