Tiffany Girls. A New Light on Tiffany
16/12/2008 t/m 30/08/2009

Singer Laren presents the first major exhibition in a Dutch museum of work from the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany. In addition to Tiffany’s famous lamps, the show includes stained-glass windows, mosaics, enamelled ‘objets de luxe’ and documentary material. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) Louis Comfort Tiffany was the most important and most inventive designer of applied art in America around 1900. He became famous chiefly for his stained-glass lamps and windows. With his elegant and decorative designs he was a leader of the (American) Art Nouveau. Moreover, his objects are a perfect combination or artistry and functionality. Tiffany Girls Recent research revealed the existence of a group of talented female designers behind Louis Comfort Tiffany, to whom many successful Tiffany patterns can now be attributed. The ‘Tiffany Girls’ worked in the Women’s Glass Cutting Department under Clara Driscoll (1861-1944) who, as it now emerges, was responsible for such popular designs as Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony and Poppy. The exhibition sheds new light on Tiffany’s design practice as well as the social position of working women in New York around 1900. Singer Collection The exhibition affords a unique opportunity to situate a masterpiece in the Singer collection, the large Tiffany hanging lamp Laburnum, in a fitting context. Anna Singer Brugh probably bought it in America for home, De Wilde Zwanen, in Laren. At that time Tiffany designs were hardly known in The Netherlands. Hanging above the dining room table, Laburnum will have certainly been a conversation piece during the countless dinners with artist friends and foreign guests. The majority of the objects on view are from the New-York Historical Society, supplemented with loans from other museums and private collections. The exhibition was held earlier in New York (2007). A New Light on Tiffany’s first European venue is Singer Laren; it will travel to the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich in the fall of 2009. Exhibition and catalogue are generously supported by Terra Foundation for American Art Prince Bernhard Culture Fund SNS Reaal Fund ABN AMRO KPMG