TIFFANY STUDIOS

The present example is very unusual in its leaded construction and is most likely an early Tiffany window, dating prior to 1900. The portrait of the young woman is created solely through the careful selection of glass pieces. The features of the young woman's face are not enameled on the surface, but have been achieved by an artistic and impressionistic layering of glass. Her sun-lit auburn hair is suggested by pieces of streaked reddish brown glass, and her white blouse is of heavily folded 'drapery' glass. The surrounding lush landscape is composed of fantanstically colored and textured pieces of glass, as well as 'fractured' glass, to evince a naturalistic environment of variegated greens. Some areas of the leading are sculpted, or milled, to simulate the vines encircling the woman's head with a profusion of leaves.

The portrait is framed by a series of rectangular borders; the leading of these is uniquely embellished with beading. The borders with rough-cut glass 'jewels' of the outer border are embedded in a wide band of leading decorated in relief with an exuberant interlacing foliate motif.

The large border panels of deep red glass are reminiscent of the lower panels of Tiffany's Parakeets and Goldfish Bowl window, executed for the World'd Columbian Exposition in 1893. They seem to showcase the beautiful, dramatic potential of the medium which Tiffany had sought to achieve by producing his own window glass.