Vase

Louis Tiffany is best known for his work in glass—windows, lampshades, mosaics, and blown glass. Yet, he worked in virtually every other decorative media. Tiffany embarked on experiments in ceramics shortly after he saw the avant-garde French pottery at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. He debuted his own work, made under the direction of Edith Lautrop, in 1904, at the Pan-American Exposition in Saint Louis, and he exhibited his work the following year at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français in Paris. Many of Tiffany’s pottery vases derived their forms from various flowers and plants, such as this vase composed of the blossoms, buds, leaves, and stems of a poppy, resulting in an irregularly shaped rim and openwork portion at the top. Complex designs such as these owe a debt to Danish porcelains of the same period, notably those by the Bing & Grøndahl factory in Copenhagen. The poppy was a motif that Tiffany and other turn-of-the-century artists, both in the United States and Europe, exploited for its expressive possibilities; Tiffany utilized it not just in pottery, but also in enamel work and leaded-glass lampshades, such as one in the Museum’s collection (see 2007.49.98a,b). The vase exhibits one of the glazes that Tiffany Studios perfected in different colors and shades of green with crystalline effects, resembling the colors of moss and lichen on the forest floor.