139

  • Favrile Inkwell

  • 1899 (marked "K 1901")
  • Louis Comfort Tiffany (American 1848-1933)
  • Blown glass and hinged brass lid
  • 8.2 x 12.5 x 12.5 cm., 3-1/8 x 5-1/4 x 5-1/4"
  • Erick O. Schonstedt Inkstand Collection, Augustana College Art Collection, 2006.1.202

Essay by James Beebe, Class of 1988

The inkwell, once a commonplace and often mundanely utilitarian writing tool, was transformed into a rarified, yet functional, object d'art by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Heir to Tiffany and Company, he was a talented painter, architect, and decorative artist. Though he designed work in various media, Tiffany is best known as America's premier glass artist. Combining his aesthetic connoisseurship and business acumen with a variety of influences, such as archaeological artifacts, Venetian glasswork techniques, advances in chemistry, and philosophical social theories, Tiffany developed and promoted a new synthesis of American decorative art, as exemplified by this favrile glass inkwell.

Tiffany was foremost a colorist. His earliest experiments were influenced by the coloration of Medieval stained glass windows (Byars 744). His later glasswork, however, such as this inkwell, emulated the quality and color of ancient Syrian and Roman glass, which had deteriorated and become iridescent after long periods of exposure to minerals while buried in soil under alternating wet and dry conditions (web gallery 5A and 5B). Attempting to artificially replicate this effect, Tiffany hired the best glassblowers and chemists to experiment with color, luster, and opacity. In 1881 he patented a type of glass he termed favrile, produced by applying metallic oxides directly to the glass or exposing it to metallic oxide vapors which imparted a metallic film either on or within the glass (Baal-Teshuva 26-30). The highly iridescent and metallic luster of this inkwell exemplifies Tiffany's patented process: the body color is solid and slightly opalescent, and the lobed form, while secondary to the color, enhances the reflective quality of the applied decoration by refracting the light hitting the inkwell's surface.

This inkwell reflects not only light, but also Tiffany's fascination with the Arts and Crafts Movement, which advocated economic and social reform and a reevaluation of design standards and labor practices. Complying with the movement's tenets, Tiffany's inkwell was free-formed, not molded, with a hand-painted swirling motif and zipper pattern, thus retaining elements of individual artistic expression. Indeed, the term favrile, derived from the Old English word fabrile, meaning handmade, further emphasized the connection (Goebel 102). Likewise, advocates of the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as Tiffany, believed that nature should be the primary source of design. The inkwell's form is naturalistic, but highly abstracted. It also attempts to reintegrate the status of art within utilitarian objects and represents Tiffany's obsession with the cult of beauty.

Although this inkwell has much in common with the Arts and Crafts Movement, it also has many conflicting elements that Tiffany was unable to resolve. For example, the manufacturing process for this inkwell, while handmade and not mechanized, was highly industrialized. Contrary to Arts and Crafts principals, Tiffany maintained a division of labor between designer and craftsman: he neither actually made, nor designed this inkwell, but retained artistic control and overriding approval of its creation (Baal-Teshuva 165-68). Though made in volume, Tiffany's inkwell was still a luxury-priced object, making his style of beauty inaccessible to many economic classes, contrary to the Movement's socialistic notion of artist/craftsman. He patented and trademarked his invention, eventually destroying his chemical formulas in 1930 to prevent others from imitating his style of beauty (Byars 744). The accelerated embrace of the Arts and Crafts Movement in America, however, led others to succeed where Tiffany failed.