Lot Essay
"We have placed in this room two windows which illustrate most perfectly the possibilities of American glass. In one window there is portrayed a number of paroquets resting upon a branch of a fruit-tree in blossom, from which is hanging a globe of gold fish; the effect produced is most realistic, and has been obtained without the assistance of paints or enamels, solely by using opalescent glass in accordance with the principles that govern mosaic work......", a description of the Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl window from the 1893 publication by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company which outlined, room by room, the wide variety of wares, both domestic and ecclesiastical, which comprised their exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Envisioned as a celebration to mark the fourth centenary of the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 'The White City', as the exposition would become known, was the largest and most elaborate assemblage of American art ever to be seen. Chicago had been rebuilt, nearly from scratch, after a fire leveled the city twenty years earlier, and was possibly best poised to embody America's emergence as a country of power and consequence, a country which was no longer dependent on Europe for its identity. The view of the Court of Honor looking down the lagoon past Daniel Chester French's commanding sculpture, "Republic", must be one of the most majestic images ever recorded of an international fair - This was the stage upon which this century's last great world's fair was mounted.
Upon the establishment of his 'favrile' glassworks in Corona, New York, in 1893, Louis Comfort Tiffany brought to fullest flower the window making principles espoused by his circle of glass designers. That windows should promote their depictions through the glass medium alone, casting off the enameled portrayals employed by artisans for centuries, was their goal. With the production of his 'favrile' glass, Tiffany would further raise the artistic level of pictorial windows in a pure glass medium.
First shown at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago in 1893, the Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl window fully employed the techniques made available by the use of this new handmade 'art glass' and of the concepts of construction advocated by Tiffany and his circle. On the basis of glass selection, a differentiation between the parakeets' feathered heads and beaks is created and their heads are given direction, all within a single piece of glass. When observed from a distance, it is obvious to the beholder that the parakeets' heads either are turned or are looking forward. However, by dwelling on a specific bird's head, it becomes apparent that this is an illusion created by more than one color being present in an individual piece of glass.
Tiffany's Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl window displays the variety and sophistication of Tiffany's newly produced glass which furthered the standard of window-making. Perhaps most dramatic of Tiffany's technical accomplishments in this window is the three-dimensional effect achieved through the use of opalescent drapery glass 'plated' with layers of 'favrile' glass. The fishbowl displays a degree of three-dimensionality as yet unseen in the leaded glass work by Tiffany. One is drawn to the image of parakeets peering into this vessel, never questioning its three-dimensional existence or the fact that it contains water and goldfish. By plating the drapery glass over the multicolored 'favrile' glass, Tiffany represents the goldfish in an impressionistic manner, as they might be observed through the distortion of a rounded glass vessel such as a fishbowl. The composition is made more enigmatic by the incorporation of real chain which seemingly suspends the vessel.
Although this composition relies on an iconography in the Japanese taste of exotic birds perching on blossom laden boughs of a cherry tree in an asymmetrical schemata, the source of the parakeet composition is an interesting one. As with contemporaries such as Winslow Homer in his painting of Goldeneye Ducks, Right and Left of 1909, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Tiffany would turn to the most reliable ornithological source for his parakeets. Six of Tiffany's seven birds can be closely compared with Audubon's Carolina Parakeets first published in The Birds of America from 1827 to 1838.
Nearly one hundred years have passed since Tiffany's original public exhibition of the Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl window and its most recent exhibition. In 1989, the window was shown at the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. and again it was exhibited in 1990 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Envisioned as a celebration to mark the fourth centenary of the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 'The White City', as the exposition would become known, was the largest and most elaborate assemblage of American art ever to be seen. Chicago had been rebuilt, nearly from scratch, after a fire leveled the city twenty years earlier, and was possibly best poised to embody America's emergence as a country of power and consequence, a country which was no longer dependent on Europe for its identity. The view of the Court of Honor looking down the lagoon past Daniel Chester French's commanding sculpture, "Republic", must be one of the most majestic images ever recorded of an international fair - This was the stage upon which this century's last great world's fair was mounted.
Upon the establishment of his 'favrile' glassworks in Corona, New York, in 1893, Louis Comfort Tiffany brought to fullest flower the window making principles espoused by his circle of glass designers. That windows should promote their depictions through the glass medium alone, casting off the enameled portrayals employed by artisans for centuries, was their goal. With the production of his 'favrile' glass, Tiffany would further raise the artistic level of pictorial windows in a pure glass medium.
First shown at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago in 1893, the Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl window fully employed the techniques made available by the use of this new handmade 'art glass' and of the concepts of construction advocated by Tiffany and his circle. On the basis of glass selection, a differentiation between the parakeets' feathered heads and beaks is created and their heads are given direction, all within a single piece of glass. When observed from a distance, it is obvious to the beholder that the parakeets' heads either are turned or are looking forward. However, by dwelling on a specific bird's head, it becomes apparent that this is an illusion created by more than one color being present in an individual piece of glass.
Tiffany's Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl window displays the variety and sophistication of Tiffany's newly produced glass which furthered the standard of window-making. Perhaps most dramatic of Tiffany's technical accomplishments in this window is the three-dimensional effect achieved through the use of opalescent drapery glass 'plated' with layers of 'favrile' glass. The fishbowl displays a degree of three-dimensionality as yet unseen in the leaded glass work by Tiffany. One is drawn to the image of parakeets peering into this vessel, never questioning its three-dimensional existence or the fact that it contains water and goldfish. By plating the drapery glass over the multicolored 'favrile' glass, Tiffany represents the goldfish in an impressionistic manner, as they might be observed through the distortion of a rounded glass vessel such as a fishbowl. The composition is made more enigmatic by the incorporation of real chain which seemingly suspends the vessel.
Although this composition relies on an iconography in the Japanese taste of exotic birds perching on blossom laden boughs of a cherry tree in an asymmetrical schemata, the source of the parakeet composition is an interesting one. As with contemporaries such as Winslow Homer in his painting of Goldeneye Ducks, Right and Left of 1909, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Tiffany would turn to the most reliable ornithological source for his parakeets. Six of Tiffany's seven birds can be closely compared with Audubon's Carolina Parakeets first published in The Birds of America from 1827 to 1838.
Nearly one hundred years have passed since Tiffany's original public exhibition of the Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl window and its most recent exhibition. In 1989, the window was shown at the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. and again it was exhibited in 1990 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.