Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl

Museum of Fine Arts - Boston, Massachusetts - Louis Comfort Tiffany created Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl
in 1893

"This magnificent window was painstakingly constructed out of rough and polished pieces of opalescent and “favrile” glass (the latter patented by L. C. Tiffany in 1894), which created effects unlike traditional stained glass windows that relied on uniform, solid-colored pieces of glass along with enameling, paint, or ink to create detailed images. With favrile glass, each piece could have several different rich colors that swirl together in varying degrees of thickness and intensity. Careful glass selection and manipulation allowed the artisans to create form and figure, including shading and depth. The variations in the yellow glass in the background of this window give the effect of ethereal, dappled sunlight, while irregularly shaped pieces of opalescent glass were used to create dimension in the composition. Opaque white drapery glass (so called because the heavily folded glass suggests fabric folds), was used over multicolored glass to suggest the impression of water in the fish bowl. To heighten the illusionistic effect, Tiffany incorporated a real chain to suspend the fish bowl. These daring techniques represented a new direction for Tiffany’s leaded glasswork that he continued to refine for years and for which he is well known today"

media.mfa.org/dropbox/docs/pr/antiquesFineArt.pdf

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