Early Decorated Favrile Glass Vase

This exceptional early Tiffany Glass Vase is part of an important series of Favrile Glass vases in the same signature sequence that were produced in the final years of the 1890s. One of these examples was exhibited in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s display at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, where it was acquired by the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany (formerly known as the Museum für Kunsthandwerk). A second example of related form with similar decoration previously owned by Joseph Heil, a legendary collector who was among the earliest wave of Tiffany’s modern devotees, is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (217.1960).

The rounded body of this vase is formed by thick, opaque glass in a rich shade of butterscotch orange. A motif of large, heart-shaped leaves and thin, striated vines encircles the body of the vase, the vines stretching up from the flat base through the narrowed neck and into the rounded, slightly inverted rim, the decoration articulated in reflective iridescent glass characterized by shifting hues ranging from silvery blue through deep orange and golden yellow.

This rare example of authentic Tiffany Favrile Glass is inscribed on the underside with signature and date code.

Height: 7 ½ inches (19 cm)
Diameter: 6 ½ inches (16.5 cm)

Related example illustrated:
R. Joppien, Louis C. Tiffany. Meisterwerke des amerikanischen Jugendstils, exh. cat., Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, 1999, p. 147