Gold Favrile Vase

Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 1848-1933) was an American artist and designer who is perhaps best known for his stained glass lamps and windows. He worked in a variety of media designing mosaics, ceramics, jewelry, metalwork and blown glass. In 1893 he opened a glass factory in New York and established a unique method of treating molten glass with metallic oxides that absorbed into the glass, creating an iridescent surface effect. That same year Tiffany coined the term favrile (meaning hand-fabricated), which he patented in 1894 and applied the term to all of his glass, enamel and pottery work to suggest their handmade quality. Today, the term favrile is most closely associated with the luminous iridescent art glass designed by Tiffany, like this.