Teamwork in Art Nouveau Design: Tiffany and Colonna

Contributed by David A. Hanks, Driehaus Museum Consulting Curator

Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company Vase with mounts, Vase: c. 1897-98; mounts: 1898, Mounts designed by Edward Colonna with enameling by Eugène Feuillâtre, Favrile glass with gilt silver and plique-à-jour enamel mounts Height: 9 5/8 inches, Engraved on underside: L.C.T./G88, Collection of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum.

Though small in scale, this vase has a dramatic presence. It showcases a joint effort between three designers and craftsmen of the late nineteenth century: Louis Comfort Tiffany, who designed the vase, Edward Colonna, who created the mounts, and Eugène Feuillâtre, who enameled the mounts. Tiffany’s bottle-shaped glass vase is simple in its graceful form, colored with subtle swags of iridescent blue, green, and grey. The flamboyant Art Nouveau handles, which grip the elongated neck of the vase, dramatically enrich Tiffany’s simple form.

German-born Edward Colonna (1862-1948) studied architecture in Belgium and moved to the United States in 1882.¹  He worked for Louis Comfort Tiffany from 1883 to 1884, during which time he designed a major commission for the New York residence of real estate magnate Ogden Goelet. In 1888, Colonna moved to Montreal, where he worked on projects for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and in 1893 he left for Europe. He was employed in 1898 as a designer for the art dealer Siegfried Bing, who had a well-known gallery in Paris where Tiffany’s glass was shown.²

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) was a celebrated designer in his own day and his brilliant reputation has continued to the present. His career, which spanned from the 1870s through the 1920s, initially began with his work as a painter before he shifted his focus to decorative arts and interior design. The prolific output of his studio over many years covered a wide range of decorative arts including blown glass vessels, leaded glass windows, oil and electric lamps, pottery, jewelry and mosaics. In 1892, he established Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, purchasing a building in Corona (Queens), New York where he began to produce a new kind of blown glass which he called Favrile, the name derived from an Old English word that meant handmade. Favrile glass blended different colors in a molten state to achieve a smooth, iridescent surface with subtle shading, as seen in this vase.

Tiffany’s new Favrile glass greatly impressed the Parisian art dealer Siegfried Bing on his visit to New York in 1894. Bing was captivated with Tiffany’s aesthetic achievements of color and form, and with the simulation of nature within the glass itself. He admired the scale and complexity of Tiffany’s production, which he described in 1896 as “a vast central workshop that would consolidate under one room an army of craftsmen...all working to give shape to the carefully planned concepts of a group of directing artists...” ³Following his visit to the United States, Bing became the sole representative of the Tiffany firm in Europe, where Tiffany sought to establish his international reputation.

Bing’s highly regarded gallery was initially known for selling Japanese art. In December 1895, he launched a new gallery, “L’Art Nouveau,” which focused on contemporary fine and decorative arts. Tiffany’s Favrile glass, already at hand, was included in the opening of the new gallery,which was fitted out as rooms with furnishings. Tiffany’s work on view can be seen in a photograph of the gallery (Fig. 1) which shows a vitrine just below the staircase leading to a second level.

According to Dr. Martin Eidelberg, around 1897-98 Bing changed his business approach to appeal more to French tastes. He promoted the concept of a unified interior, presenting “a unified look by creating a house style, one which would be more acceptable to the French.”⁴ Among the designers Bing engaged to achieve this goal were the French furniture maker Eugène Gaillard and the Dutch artist Georges de Feure. Chief among his new employees was Edward Colonna, who made mounts for a variety of objects in Bing’s inventory, including Tiffany glass.

(At left: Fig. 1 - Bing's Art Nouvea gallery, Paris)


Bing played a major role in popularizing Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau mounts created by Colonna, with undulating lines of gilt silver encompassing luminous enamel work, gave the simple Tiffany vase a completely different look, more in keeping with the new style. The enamel work was executed by Eugène Feuillâtre, a French sculptor and enameller who had headed René Lalique’s enamel workshop from 1890 to 1897 before establishing his own workshop.

Although Feuillâtre specialized in enamel on silver, the enameling of this vase is plique à jour, a technique in which transparent enamel fills the cells of the filigree without any metal backing, allowing light to shine through. Not quite ten inches high, the vase achieves a monumental presence with the addition of the elaborate handles, which extend with tendrils to the lip and down to the base.

This Tiffany-Colonna vase may be regarded as a joint effort between leading artists of the period. Dr. Eidelberg has suggested it may not have been a true collaboration, as Tiffany may not have known of Colonna’s additions to his vases until after they were completed.⁵ However, Bing was sensitive to the artists he represented and might have informed Tiffany about the addition of the Art Nouveau mounts beforehand. Tiffany never embraced Art Nouveau; therefore, it seems unlikely he would have been pleased with the extravagant mounts. It is not known exactly how many of these hybrid designs were made, but an example in the Corning Museum of Glass (Fig. 2) demonstrates another example of the combined work of these designers.


(Above: Fig. 2 - Tiffany-Colonna vase, Corning Museum of Glass)