Tiffany Treasures

We had known that the American Church owned two large Tiffany glass windows that are considered French National Treasures. They are of two angels, Hope and Contemplation, and were commissioned by the church way back in 1898. They were originally in the first church and were moved over to the new church in 1930.

People often drop by to study them both from inside the sanctuary and from the outside. But one morning as Don was preparing the sanctuary for a wedding he was surprised to see visitors in the sanctuary quite so early. The guests were visiting with some of the church staff and were looking at the Tiffany windows.

It turns out that one of the guests was a Tiffany expert from the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and she didn’t know these windows existed. The expert was here in Paris to help set up a special showing of Tiffany glass at the Luxembourg Museum. Later we found out that they are the only Tiffany glass windows in a church in all of Europe….as far as they know!!!

Later we were able to go to a special pre showing of the Tiffany glass at the museum. We learned more than a few things about Tiffany windows. One, they are often layered with different glasses to create a special effect, such as under water or debth/3-D. Second, Lewis Tiffany developed a way of folding or creasing molten glass to give a neat effect, such as folds in a dress. Our angels have beautiful folds in their skirts. Third, he was early on able to create variations of color…even different colors within one piece of glass…which is beautiful in skies, flowers and water, especially. Fourth, he was so full of new ideas that his company could hardly keep up with all his new designs and concepts and ways to use glass.

Louis Tiffany, born in 1848, had the financial backing that most artists only dream of. His father was the founder of Tiffany and company that became the famous jewelry and silver firm. But Louis decided not to follow his father’s footsteps and began his career as a painter….which he continued throughout his lifetime. In the 1870’s he turned to interior design and was successful with that. After playing around with broken jelly glasses and wine bottles, Tiffany started a new company for stained glass that left the impurities in the glass….creating the first new type of stained glass in several hundred years. Later on he used the broken, cast off pieces of colored glass to create his beautiful lamps. The rest is history.

The value of his work is unbelievable. One of the professionals at the showing told Don that one of the lamps displayed had sold for $3,000,000 (that’s right, 3 million) several years ago and would probably be valued at about $7,500,000 now. As I looked around the room, I couldn’t begin to guesstimate the value of the collection, but was thankful that it had been put together for the people’s enjoyment.

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