Powder box

This glass, lidded container is a powder box by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) in the Art Deco style. Designed to store a woman’s cosmetics, this container would have sat pride of place on a dressing table in a fashionable home.

Blown-moulded as two component parts, the box comprises a truncated cylindrical form and a flat circular lid. The lid has been moulded with a rural scene that pictures a girl playing with a goat. The iridescent, lustrous quality of the glass gives the powder box a finish that resembles mother-of-pearl.

Louis Comfort Tiffany patented his lusterware in 1881, and registered Favrile as a trademark in 1894. [1] Extremely desirable at the turn of the century, the ‘soft, incandescent sheen’ [2] of Tiffany glassware took inspiration from the lustrous colours of Roman and Syrian excavated blown glass. [3]

Functional and decorative, evenly spaced vertical metal strips connect the gilt foot ring with the neck ring and hinged cover ring. The lidded box is stamped on the metal surround with the mark: ‘Louis C. Tiffany Furnaces Inc. 109’. Tiffany’s Stourbridge Glass Company in Corona, Queens, New York, was renamed Tiffany Furnaces in 1902 and became Louis C. Tiffany Furnaces, Inc. in 1920. [4] The container’s mark of manufacture indicates that the container was made in the 1920s.

It was not unusual for Tiffany to combine metal and glass, as seen in the company’s leaded glass lampshades [Object Number: 21022A and 21022B]. Designers for Tiffany experimented with techniques and combined materials to produce exquisite objects for an international luxury goods market. Tiffany glass perfume bottles with gem incrusted gold lids (designed by Paulding Farnham, c. 1900) and glass vases with elaborate silver mounts (by Edward Colonna, c.1899) demonstrate the level of craftsmanship and ingenuity at Tiffany & Co. [5]

Vanessa Tothill, November 2020

[1] John Loring, Louis Comfort Tiffany at Tiffany & Co. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2002), pp. 241-42.

Read More