American Artist, Designer. He is best known for his work in stained glass and as the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. Born in New York City, New York, he was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany and Company. He received his education at the Pennsylvania Military Academy in Chester, Pennsylvania and the Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Originally trained as a painter, he became interested in glassmaking around 1875, working at several glasshouses in Brooklyn, New York, from 1875 to 1878. In 1879 he joined with Candace Wheeler, Samuel Colman and Lockwood de Forest to form the Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated American Artists. In 1881 he did the interior design work of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, but his firm's most notable work occurred in 1882, when President Chester A. Arthur commissioned him to renovate the White House, specifically the East Room, the Blue Room, the Red Room, the State Dining Room, and the Entrance Hall, with new furnishings wallpaper, repainting in decorative patterns, installing newly designed mantelpieces, and adding Tiffany glass to the gaslight fixtures, windows, and installing the opalescent floor to ceiling glass screen in the Entrance Hall. In 1885 the firm broke up and he decided to pursue his own glassmaking firm, the Tiffany Glass Company, which became known as Tiffany Studios in 1902. In 1893 he built a new factory called the Stourbridge Glass Company in Corona, Queens, New York, which later became Tiffany Glass Furnaces. That same year he introduced the term "Favrile" (French for handmade) in conjunction with his first production of blown glass at his new factory and trademarked the term in November 1894. At its peak, the factory employed over 300 artisans. His first famous commercially produced lamps date from around 1895 and much of the company's production was in making stained glass windows and Tiffany lamps. In 1902 he became the first Design Director for his father's Tiffany and Company. His awards and honors include 44 medals at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, gold medal, Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (France, 1900), grand prix, Paris Exposition (1900), grand prix, Saint Petersburg, Russia Exposition (1901), gold medal, Buffalo, New York Exposition (1901), gold medal, Dresden, Germany Exposition (1901), gold medal and special diploma, Turin, Italy Exposition (1902), gold medal, Saint Louis, Missouri Exposition (1904), gold medal, Jamestown Exposition (1907), grand prize, Seattle, Washington Exposition (1909), gold medal, Panama Exposition (1915), and gold medal, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Sesquicentennial Exposition (1926). He died in New York City, New York at the age of 84.
Bio by: William Bjornstad
Family Members
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Charles Lewis Tiffany
1812–1902
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Harriet Olivia Avery Young Tiffany
1817–1897
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Mary Woodbridge Goddard Tiffany
1846–1884 (m. 1872)
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Louise Wakeman Knox Tiffany
1851–1904 (m. 1886)
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Charles Lewis Tiffany
1842–1847
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Annie Olivia Tiffany Mitchell
1844–1937
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Louise Harriet Tiffany
1856–1937
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Henry Charles Tiffany
1858–1859
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Burnett Young Tiffany
1860–1945
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Mary Woodbridge Tiffany Lusk
1873–1963
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Charles Lewis Tiffany
1878–1947
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Hilda Goddard Tiffany
1879–1908
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Comfort Tiffany Gilder
1887–1974
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Annie Olivia Tiffany
1888–1892
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Dorothy Trimble Tiffany Burlingham
1891–1979
Flowers
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