The Met Store's annual cloisonné ornaments typically pay homage to works by Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 1848–1933) and his designers. This year's luminous trio gathers the lush hydrangeas, peonies, and hollyhocks featured in Garden Landscape (1912), a marvelous stained-glass window commissioned and designed by two noteworthy women, and recently acquired by the Museum in celebration of the American Wing's 100th anniversary.
Celebrating 100 Years of the American Wing
November 2024 marks the centennial of The Met’s American Wing, originally established in 1924 to display regional domestic arts of the 17th through the early 19th century.
Over the last 100 years, the American Wing has evolved into a monumental collection of some 20,000 treasures—triumphs of painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and beyond—made by Black, European American, Latin American, and Native American artists between the colonial and early modern periods of American history.
Marking the milestone is The American Wing at 100, a fresh interpretation of the collection unveiled on November 8, 2024. Three floors of gallery space will be reinstalled and reinvigorated with new acquisitions and loans from other institutions to reveal meaningful connections across cultures and eras, and to reconsider the broadly conceived definition of “American” art.
The Women Behind Louis Comfort Tiffany's Glass Masterpieces
Garden Landscape is among the latest additions to the American Wing. At nearly seven feet tall by over 10 feet wide, this spectacular three-panel window was made at the behest of the businesswoman, philanthropist, and suffragist Sarah Cochran, who sought to immortalize the idyllic grounds of her grand estate, Linden Hall, in Pennsylvania. It was subsequently designed by Agnes F. Northrop (American, 1857–1953) for Tiffany Studios (American, 1902–32).
The attribution to Northrop is based on a signed design drawing for the window (shown above), also in The Met collection. The Museum houses a number of Northrop's preliminary watercolors, which have been crucial to discerning the extent of her contributions to Tiffany Studios productions.
A native of Queens, New York, where Tiffany Studios was based, Northrop was one of many important—albeit long under-recognized—women, posthumously referred to as “Tiffany Girls,” in Louis Comfort Tiffany's employ. The “Tiffany Girls” were often tasked with selecting and cutting the glass pieces ultimately showcased in windows and lampshades, but Northrop was one of the firm's leading designers with an independent studio of her own.
Northrop conceived of her first landscape window for Tiffany Studios in 1885, and spent virtually her entire career creating windows and other media such as lampshades for the company. The facility with which Northrop rendered splendid gardens and landscapes in glass was heavily relied on until Tiffany Studios closed in the early 1930s.
In Garden Landscape, Northrop achieved an especially illusionistic quality by exploiting the effects of Favrile glass. Favrile (from the Old English term fabrile, meaning "handwrought") was the result of blending colors together while the glass was still in its molten state—a method that Louis Comfort Tiffany devised in the early 1890s to achieve more subtle effects of shading and texture. Garden Landscape, a paragon of Favrile glass, boasts especially notable artisanship.
Cloisonné Art Ornaments Inspired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In its entirety, Garden Landscape offers a long vista through tall pines flanking a central fountain amid a profusion of flowers: hydrangeas, peonies, and hollyhocks, as well as nasturtiums and foxgloves. These were subjects preferred by Northrop and her contemporaries, and aligned with the comforting nostalgia of the “old-fashioned garden.” This magnificent window preserves Cochran's beloved garden, perennially in full bloom, while our cloisonné ornaments pay homage to Northrop's dazzling vision in glass.
Each ornament is crafted by an artisan in China, where cloisonné has a storied history across the Yuan (1271–1368), Ming (1368–1644), and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, and where cloisonné was declared a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.
As part of the process of making our ornaments, craftspeople create outlines with copper wire, fill in the patterns with colorful enamel, and then fire them at high temperatures. Grinding, polishing, gilding, and other processes refine each product.
Available individually and as a set, the Louis C. Tiffany Garden Landscape Cloisonné Ornaments are shoppable in-store and online. To learn more about the history of The Met Store's ornament program, read our blog post here.
*Purchase, Alan Gerry Gift; 2023 Benefit Fund; Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest; funds and gifts from various donors, by exchange; Ronald S. Kane Bequest, in memory of Berry B. Tracy; Lila Acheson Wallace, several members of The Chairman's Council, The Erving and Joyce Wolf Foundation, Martha J. Fleischman, Elizabeth J. and Paul De Rosa, Women and the Critical Eye, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Lockwood Chilton Jr., Cheryl and Blair Effron, The Felicia Fund, Julie and James Alexandre, Elizabeth and Richard Miller, Anonymous, John and Margaret Ruttenberg, and The Derald H. Ruttenberg Foundation Gifts, 2023
