On my second day at SECAC, I arrived a bit late and grabbed a quick bite in the central social room before heading downstairs. Stella P. Alberaéz Tascón was the chair of a session that would be happening n several hours. She had to sit down and write up an introduction. As she did that, I wandered across the hall and poked my head into a session in progress. I had done no research to pick the topic, and I simply sat in the back row and started to sketch.
In the row in front of me an attendee was working on a portrait drawing in his sketchbook. I immediately felt at home. I was at a conference where everyone was an artist in one form or another. The only other time I felt this at home was in Paris where I would sketch at events and always see another artist at work in the room.
The session I found myself in was about Art of the Gilded Age in America. The chair was Willaim R. Levin from Centre College (emeritus). The speaker at the front podium was Virginia Raguin from the College of the Holy Cross (emeritus). Her talk was about Stained Glass in the Gilded Age. I was immediately drawn in and fascinated. She mentioned that Lewis Comfort Tiffany got his start at a Worlds Fair. She seemed to downplay Tiffany’s artistry and focused on his marketing ability, business acumen and ability to surround himself with very talented artists.
I have sketched at the Tiffany Museum in Winter Park multiple times so many of the slides of stained-glass works were familiar. The Tiffany Museum is home for the Tiffany Chapel which was created by Tiffany’s newly founded firm, Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, to demonstrate its artistry and craftsmanship in producing ecclesiastical goods ranging from clerical vestments and furnishings to mosaics and leaded-glass windows. It was put on display in the World’s Fair, it so moved visitors that men doffed their hats in response.
The Chapel won many awards at the World’s Fair and based on it’s reputation the Tiffany brand became highly sought after worldwide. The chapel itself went into a basement crypt at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine which was under construction in NYC. The chapel was stunted and suffered from water damage in the crypt from 1899 to 1911. Tiffany offered to buy it back from the church so he could restore it. Tiffany had the chapel removed and installed it, with substantial repairs by his workmen, in a free-standing building at Laurelton Hall, his Long Island country estate. There it remained his pride and joy up until his death in 1949.
16 years after his death, the Tiffany Foundation began dismantling the chapel, selling off portions to institutions in the region. In 1957 the Tiffany estate suffered from a huge fire which gutted many of the buildings. A daughter of Tiffany’s informed several collectors from Winter Park that much of the leaded glass was still intact after the fire. The collectors went to the burnt-out shell of the Tiffany estate to buy all of the mansion’s then-unwanted windows and architectural fragments. I love the story of the chapel which was gorgeous in it’s youth then abandoned and destitute and finally rising from the ashes like a phoenix.