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Lot Essay
In 1907, Louis Comfort Tiffany assumed artistic leadership of Tiffany & Co., his father's firm. In the same year he arranged for Tiffany & Co. to acquire the jewelry and precious objects department of his Tiffany Furnaces. The ensuing establishment of these workshops on the 6th floor of Tiffany & Co.'s Fifth Avenue premises spawned a 26-year period of exceptional creativity in producing jewelry, enamels, and precious objects.
Janet Zapata has characterized the period from 1912 to 1916 as the most productive in terms of precious metal holloware, and Louis Tiffany designed a number of superb objects in gold with enamel and gem-stones in the run-up to the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and the 1916 retrospective of his work held at Tiffany Studios. The "Four Seasons" gold jewel box, with enamel panels based on his stained glass window, is one of the best known objects from this period, and is now in the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum. The present cup belongs to the group of gold objects employing plique-à-jour, or translucent, enamel framed within gold cloisons. A related cup in an Indian-inspired pattern of 1913 was exhibited at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where it was seen and acquired by Henry Walters, and it remains in the collection of the Walters Art Gallery today.
The drawing for the present cup is dated December 1916.
(Janet Zapata, The Jewelry and Enamels of Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1993, esp. chapter 5, "The Final Years: The Jeweled Splendors," pp. 137-160)
Janet Zapata has characterized the period from 1912 to 1916 as the most productive in terms of precious metal holloware, and Louis Tiffany designed a number of superb objects in gold with enamel and gem-stones in the run-up to the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and the 1916 retrospective of his work held at Tiffany Studios. The "Four Seasons" gold jewel box, with enamel panels based on his stained glass window, is one of the best known objects from this period, and is now in the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum. The present cup belongs to the group of gold objects employing plique-à-jour, or translucent, enamel framed within gold cloisons. A related cup in an Indian-inspired pattern of 1913 was exhibited at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where it was seen and acquired by Henry Walters, and it remains in the collection of the Walters Art Gallery today.
The drawing for the present cup is dated December 1916.
(Janet Zapata, The Jewelry and Enamels of Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1993, esp. chapter 5, "The Final Years: The Jeweled Splendors," pp. 137-160)