EilkerJaiill lent

Tiffany

Peacock Vase, circa
1900, Cooper-Hewitt
National Design
Museum, gift of
Stanley Siegel, from
the Stanley Siegel
Collection

Triumph

Jewish collectors and art dealers

helped facilitate resurgence of interest

in the work of a master glass artist.

I

Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News

ongregation Shearith
Israel,New York City's
Spanish and Portuguese
synagogue, offers. tours to famil-
iarize visitors with the history of
North America's oldest Jewish
congregation and point out the
artistry of the building.
Members of the synagogue,
which was founded in 1654, in
recent years supported a restora-
tion of the structure to its origi-
nal appearance as seen in 1897.
The main sanctuary was

C

designed by Louis Comfort
Tiffany (1848-1933), who created
windows with levels of colors,
moving upward from brown
earth tones to sky blues.
Brightening and beautifying
religious edifices, regardless of
the faith followed in each one,
represented important commis-
sions for the glass artist, who
developed the style that today-
garners worldwide popularity
and recognition.
The artist, son of Tiffany & Co.
founder and jewelry magnate
Charles Lewis Tiffany, had a priv-
ileged upbringing and mapped

out a colorful life of his own.
Although his works had reached
great success, there had been dif-
ficult times and loss of favor that
Jewish art dealers and patrons
helped overcome.
The artist, his artwork and
admirers come to attention with
an exhibit running through April
30 at the Toledo Museum of Art:
"Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist
for the Ages" assembles more
than 120 examples of Tiffany's
talents.

Jewish Support

Organized thematically, the exhi-
bition features stained-glass win-
dows, mosaics, enamels, pottery,
paintings, photography, metal-
work, furniture and jewelry. The
objects are arranged according to
recurring themes, such as nature,
antiquities, archaeology and
abstractions.
The namesake catalogue
(Scala Publishers; $49.95) that
accompanies the exhibit has
essays and pictures to explore
Tiffany's work as a craftsman,
technological innovator and
manufacturer. Essayist Martin
Filler, architecture and design
critic, has done considerable
research into Tiffany's life, is
familiar with the support of the
Jewish community and discussed
it with The Jewish News.
"Samuel Bing, a Paris dealer in
decorative arts, was Jewish and
the biggest early promoter of

Window Panel with
Swimming Fish, circa 1890,

leaded glass, from the

Mark Twain House and

Museum in Hartford, Conn.

42

February 23 2006

iN

Tiffany," Filler says. "Bing
was very influential and
had exhibition stands at
some of the turn-of-the-
century world fairs.
"These fairs, before
mass media, was
the big way of
getting a
high level
of inter-
national
audience
to see
artists'
work. In the
catalogue, there's an illustra-
tion of a golden, urn-shaped
Tiffany vase in an ivory presenta-
tion case, and that was some-
thing that Tiffany made on the
request of Bing as a special
showpiece."
Filler explains that Tiffany was
a strong entrepreneur and eager
to become part of the interna-
tional art glass scene. Although
Tiffany was an innovator, he
became more conservative in the
1920s in response to changes in
public attitude and the market.
With the Depression, interest in
Tiffany's work became dormant.

Resurgence
New interest was brought to
Tiffany's designs after his death,
particularly with the help of a
Jewish New York dealer, Lillian
Brimberg Nassau, whose son,
Paul, continues to operate Lillian
Nassau Limited.
"Lillian went door to door to
buy old gold during the
Depression:' Filler says. "In the
course of this new career, she
was asked sometimes if she was
interested in buying other things,
and she began a small trade in
bric-a-brac and eventually
opened a shop.
"Lillian dealt in Art Nouveau
furniture and Tiffany pieces. By
the end of World War II, she was
developing a trade in Tiffany and

was probably the best source
in America, if not the world."
Nassau's clientele included
people involved with the
Museum of Modern Art.
"Several of the impor-
tant people associ-
ated with the
museum
were buying
Tiffany
pieces from
Lillian and
later donat-
ing them to
the permanent col-
lection of the museum;' Filler
says. "One of the key figures was
Edgar Kaufmann Jr., the son of
the owner of the Pittsburgh
department store (who commis-
sioned Frank Lloyd Wright to
design and build Fallingwater for
his family).
"The son became a design
curator at the museum and was a
passionate Tiffany collector. This
was an important turning point
as Tiffany pieces went from
obscurity in the late 1940s and
early 1950s to having advocates
resurrecting the artist's reputa-
tion."
Nassau's Jewish clients have
included record producer and
media mogul David Geffen as
well as star entertainer Barbra
Streisand and singer Paul Simon.

Artist Appreciation
"There often was something
affordable to buy at Lillian's,"
Filler says. "She used to have a
big trunk of Tiffany test tiles in
her basement.
"I was one of the people who
would go there in the 1970s, sit
on the floor in her basement and
rummage through the tiles to
pick out the ones I liked most.
These were the little square glass
tiles that Tiffany had used to test
mixtures of colors, and they cost
about $20 or $30."
The tile prices were quite dif-
ferent from what Tiffany works