Tiffany Vase
date: label: date made
content: ca 1895-1905
name: label: maker
content: Louis Comfort Tiffany Favrile Pottery Co.
notes: label: Description
content: About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
label: Description
content: Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20th century.
label: Description
content: About Tiffany Pottery:
label: Description
content: Tiffany Pottery translated Art Nouveau aesthetics to ceramics by emphasizing native plants, not only in surface designs, but also in the shapes themselves of the pottery items. Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Studios in Corona, New York, were famous for stained glass, and they began experimenting with ceramics in 1898. Tiffany Favrile (“handmade”) pottery was shown at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, and sales of vases and lamp bases began in 1905 in the Tiffany and Company showroom in New York City. Mostly cast from molds, Tiffany Pottery was originally a light yellow-green (sometimes referred to as “old ivory”), and later glazes were matte, crystalline, or iridescent in dark brown, green, red, and blue tones. Later designs included birds, insects, and geometric forms, and electroplated metal decoration was also perfected. Not as commercially successful as other Tiffany wares, pottery was discontinued between 1917 and 1920 (Evans 1987:283).
label: Description
content: (Evans, Paul, 1987. Art Pottery of the United States. New York: Feingold and Lewis Publishing Corp.)
label: Description
content: About the Object:
label: Description
content: Footed, globular, short, narrow-necked vase of fine-textured white clay, fired fairly hard but not vitrified, because still absorbent as shown by the rust-like stains remaining after thorough conservation. Probably free-thrown on the wheel. Unglazed inside and out. Decorated all over with five-parted woodbine-like leaves in relief on a diagonally-tooled background of striations. Leaves appear not to have been applied, but entirely tool-worked. Mark scratched on the bottom. Likely made between 1895 and 1905.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, New York City
topic: label: Subject
content: Art Pottery
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.392659
label: catalog number
content: 392659
label: accession number
content: 202032
objectType: label: Object Name
content: vase
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ceramic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 5/8 in x 4 3/8 in; 14.2875 cm x 11.1125 cm