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On this day in New York · February 18, 1848

Louis Comfort Tiffany Is Born on Murray Hill

The jeweler's son who couldn't stand plain glass grew up to trap sunlight in windows and lamps that New York museums and churches still glow with today.

The facts

Born
February 18, 1848, New York City
Father
Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company
Company milestone
Tiffany Glass Company incorporated December 1, 1885; renamed Tiffany Studios in 1900
Died
January 17, 1933; interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn

Louis Comfort Tiffany was born in New York City on February 18, 1848, the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the jeweler who founded Tiffany and Company. He trained first as a painter, studying under George Inness and Samuel Colman, before turning to glassmaking around 1875. He built his own company rather than simply inherit his father's, incorporating the Tiffany Glass Company on December 1, 1885, which grew into Tiffany Studios by 1900. Working in Favrile glass, a technique he developed and patented, he produced the stained-glass windows and blown-glass lamps, the Dragonfly and Wisteria shades among them, that made his name distinct from the store on Fifth Avenue. He died in New York on January 17, 1933, and is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

In their words

The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.

  1. Color is to the eye what music is to the ear.

    Louis Comfort Tiffany, in The Art Work of Louis C. Tiffany

    Source: Wikiquote
  2. I have always striven to fix beauty in wood, stone, glass or pottery, in oil or watercolor by using whatever seemed fittest for the expression of beauty, that has been my creed.

    Louis Comfort Tiffany, in The Art Work of Louis C. Tiffany

    Source: Wikiquote

Why it still matters

Tiffany could have just run the family store; instead he spent decades chasing a technical problem, how to get color and light to move inside glass itself, and the answer is still on view in Brooklyn churches, the Met, and Green-Wood Cemetery where he's buried a few miles from where he was born.

Sources

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