Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist who is best known for making art with glass. He was born in 1848 and lived until 1933.
Tiffany is the most famous stained glass artist of all times. When he was a young painter, he decided to decorate the windows in his studio. He wanted to use colored glass like he’d seen in the old cathedrals in Europe. But no one made glass like that any more. So Tiffany researched how glass was made. He discovered that different minerals and impurities in the glass MADE different colors and patterns. When the glass factories refused to make glass like this, Tiffany built furnaces and made his own.
Glass is made by melting minerals together with high heat. The melted glass can be shaped into vases or bottles, or poured out flat to make sheets. Once the glass is cooled, it can be cut into pieces.
It took hundred of pieces of stained glass to build windows like Magnolias and Irises seen above. Some pieces are big, like the sky and clouds. Other pieces are very small, like the petals of the flowers and thin branches of the tree. Some of the glass is painted, like the distant river flowing into the lake. Every piece of glass is set into a metal framework to create the window.
Transparent and translucent: When you can see things through glass it is called transparent. Most windows are transparent glass so we can see outside. When the glass is deeply colored, it is called translucent. Translucent glass blocks visibility but still lets the light shine through.
Experiment with your own art to discover how transparent different materials can be. Color on tracing paper and hang your drawing in the window. Does light come through. Now color on thick drawing paper or cardboard. How does this material look different in the window. Use marker pens on sheets of clear plastic. Look online for many different ways for kids to make “stained glass” with plastic kits, tissue paper, waxed paper and more. You can even buy Tiffany coloring books where his famous window designs are printed on thin paper that glow with light in the window after you color the shapes.