Studio: international art (14.1898)

Tiffa ny Glass

design is often employed with a view to providing
the glazier with “ useful ” glasses for obtaining
certain recurring effects of drapery, modelling, or
backgrounds. There are even kinds of glasses
known as “ landscape glass,” or flower glass,
specially designed for foliage or flowers (for in-
stance, wisteria, nasturtium), where glass of the
colour required is dropped into the mass of
another colour while both are still hot on the
table. The famous Tiffany drapery glass is made
by manipulating the sheet while still hot, as one
would do with pastry, catching hold of it from
both ends (with iron hooks, the hands cased in
asbestos gloves), and pushing it together till it falls
into folds.

Discs are also made in the old way by blowing
and twirling, giving infinite variety when in the
hands of a clever workman they are applied to the
rich resources of the Favrile glass.

For mosaic, discs are largely used, mostly in the

form of a coating of colour over opaque white.
But there is no rule—glass of every kind is used.
1 have seen an intelligent young woman, with whom
I had had some pleasant talk, hunting round
among the “ returns ” in the cellar for the shade
she wanted, and sometimes glass is blown into thick
balls and cut across to give the desired tone.
From what I have said, it will be seen that the
palette of the mosaic worker is practically un-
limited. The rate of skill in translation seemed to
me very high. The processes seen in the work-
shops are naturally the “ indirect ” ones, with
modifications. The mosaic is put together on
sheets of stiff paper on easels, the face of the
mosaic always being turned towards the worker.
When completed, paper is carefully pasted over
the face of the mosaic, and it is then retransferred
to the wall or slab, on the principle followed in
the restoring of frescoes. In accordance with the
realistic tastes prevailing in the Tiffany pictorial
work, sectilice find more favour than the
more austere tessera. The young
women working under Mr. Tiffany’s
directions use them with admirable
patience, dexterity, and freedom. It
is a real work of translation, for the
colour sketch does not give any guide
to the shapes of the sectilice (which are
cut with pliers as the work proceeds),
or to the colour harmonies demanded
by the nature of the glass. In all the
works that I have followed or com-
pared with the colour sketch, the
mosaic is an improvement on the
sketch—broader, happier, and yet
more subdued. The results still leave
much to be desired. The texture is
too luscious, the treatment too pic-
torial, the designs not important
enough, nor evincing any deep feeling
for, or grasp of, the nature of mosaic.
The work is what I have called it—a
translation ; the medium still awaits the
artist that shall make it his own. Mr.
Tiffany has done his part in providing
noble resources and artists capable of
handling it. It now remains for men
with a deep feeling for the dignity and
grandeur of mural art, like Mr. Edward
Simmons or Mr. Edwin Blackfield, to
come forward, make this medium their
own, and subdue its wealth to their
monumental aims.

The subject of the Favrile glass