Twenty years ago, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Met, saw photographs of a three-part Tiffany window depicting a lush garden landscape and immediately fell in love with it. Alas, the window disappeared into private hands—until a few years ago when it became available once more and was enthusiastically brought into the Museum’s collection.
Conceived, commissioned, and crafted by women, the window highlights the important, and often unrecognized, role played by women in the art of Louis C. Tiffany. It was designed by Agnes Northrop, one of Tiffany’s premier window designers and was commissioned by Sarah Cochran, a successful Pittsburgh businesswoman, philanthropist, and suffragist for Linden Hall, the large estate she built in Dawson, Pennsylvania, in 1912.
The careful selection of the ingenious glass and the cutting into often impossible shapes of literally thousands of pieces of glass was done by Tiffany’s skilled artisans, who were also largely women.
Watch as the window arrives at The Met where it is carefully examined by Frelinghuysen and Met conservator Drew Anderson before being installed in its new home in the Museum’s American Wing.
