Tiffany Studios Carved Cameo "Flower" Vase

Tiffany Studios
Carved Cameo "Flower" Vase
engraved L.C.Tiffany-Favrile 3431 J
circa 1904-1906
Dimensions
Height 8 in. (20.32 cm.)
Diameter 3 1/8 in. (7.93 cm.)
CATALOGUE NOTE
CARVING GLASS FROM NATURE
Louis C. Tiffany and Arthur J. Nash purchased Slow's Laundry in Corona, New York in April 1893 and quickly converted the building into a glasshouse.
The enterprise, named the Stourbridge Glass Company in honor of the English glassmaking center where Nash honed his craft, first began by producing the flat glass required for Tiffany's rapidly expanding leaded glass window business.
Due to Nash's influence, however, the glasshouse soon thereafter also started to make blown-glass objects. Among these earliest pieces were those that featured cut and engraved designs.
The initial offerings clearly exemplify Tiffany's initial design and glassmaking innovations, yet with an eye toward satisfying popular taste. A New York Times article reviewing the first major exhibition of blown Favrile vases in May 1894 stated: "The range of colors is very great, passing from liquid crystal, in some cases engraved in diamond facets or in low relief, to the darkest of bottle glass. Some of the combinations of colors, some of the shades and hues of one color, are successful; others look like attempts that were better thrown away." In addition to revealing the exhibition was not a complete critical triumph, the review also exposes Tiffany's attempt to appeal to buyers of brilliant cut glass, which was perhaps the most commercially successful American-made glass of the period.
The glasshouse's engraved and carved cameo glass designs quickly became more inventive and achieved national recognition with Tiffany's hiring of Fredolin Kreischmann later in 1894. Kreischmann, a native of Austria, was trained in Birmingham, England and was acknowledged as one of Europe's finest engravers, being decorated by King Ludwig of Bavaria and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, as well as admitted into the French Legion of Honor. Louis Tiffany was evidently impressed by his exhibit at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and proceeded to hire him, at "a high salary," to work for the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.
Kreischmann's work was both a critical and commercial success. His engraved and cameo pieces were considered masterpieces, some of them selling for the incredible sum of $1500, and found their way into the collections of the Vanderbilts, Goulds and Havemeyers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Museum (Berlin) and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) also obtained examples of his work. The vase offered in this auction (lot 221), made around 1898, clearly demonstrates the glasshouse's and Kreischmann's incredible skills. The finely engraved foliage and the beautifully carved cameo flowers are clear indications that this piece was the work of a master craftsman.
Fredolin Kreischmann's death on August 6, 1898, at the age of 45, could have had a devastating effect on the glasshouse. Even six months later, the (Brooklyn) Daily Standard Union described the loss as "a vacancy which is found almost impossible to fill." However, superbly skilled engravers were eventually discovered to replace him and the company continued to manufacture exemplary engraved and carved cameo pieces for the remainder of its existence.
The fact that the glasshouse made works in cameo is no surprise, considering Nash's background working for Edward Webb in England and Tiffany's knowledge of what Galle was doing in France. Tiffany's cameo glass, however, differed radically from the commercial European production in two important aspects. While the European glassworks generally cased, or covered, the entire body of the piece with a single or multiple layers of glass and then removed the background with acid to create the cameo effect, Tiffany's glassworkers usually padded small pieces of differently colored glass onto the body. Instead of acid, they used engraving and cutting tools to form and refine the design. Both of these techniques added considerably to the cost of production, but it gave Tiffany the appearance he desired.
- Paul Doros