iThe Metropolitan Museum of ArtUpper East Side
Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany
The dazzling stained-glass windows, lamps, mosaics, and interiors from Tiffany's studios began as drawings created by the many talented designers who worked there.
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The wisteria transoms made for Tiffany Studios' 1911 window Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria turned up in a private home in Arizona. Here they rejoin the window, lent by the Chrysler Museum of Art, for the first time in at least half a century. The Chrysler's research identifies the woman as the opera singer Lillian Nordica. The man who commissioned it had twice asked her to marry him.
The rest is mostly paper: nearly 120 watercolor designs, all from The Met's collection, for windows, lamps, mosaics and interiors commissioned from the mid-1880s to the 1920s. Finished windows, mosaics, enamels and lamps hang beside their drawings. The designers were the studio's staff, often émigrés and women such as Clara Driscoll and Agnes Northrop. You come for the name on the lamp and leave knowing who drew it.
It runs until 7 February in Galleries 691-693 at The Met Fifth Avenue, free with Museum admission. Members can see it from 9 to 10am on select weekend mornings.
Look for
Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria (1911)
Look for the Chrysler Museum's stained-glass window shown with its original wisteria transoms, which were found in an Arizona home.
The Poppy lampshade design
Clara Driscoll and Alice Gouvy's watercolor design, around 1900, for one of the studio's poppy lampshades.
First Presbyterian Church, Poughkeepsie
A watercolor and graphite design for the church's whole interior, drawn around 1906-08 on transparent paper.
Good for
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
With kids
Teen Studio: From Drawings to Stained Glass, on 14 November at 2pm, is for ages 12 to 18.
Also at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. TiffanyCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Collection in Focus: Modern European CurrentsPhoto: Ariel Ione Williams, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to NowCourtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- Taryn Simon | Father Country I Do Love YouCourtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- The Metropolitan Museum of ArtHugo Schneider, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Neue Galerie New YorkFrancesca.hyanna19 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumAjay Suresh, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design MuseumEpicgenius, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- American Museum of Natural HistoryIngfbruno, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0