Using photographs, models, and art objects, Secrets of Tiffany Glassmaking illustrates some of the major processes that Louis Comfort Tiffany adopted, adapted, and developed to produce what many would say is the most wondrous glass art of all time. Contemporary models show how Tiffany’s famed blown-glass vases and leaded-glass windows and lamps were constructed. The teaching exhibition also includes modern examples of the various tools used throughout the years in glassmaking, as well as a board with various selections of authentic Tiffany glass for visitors to touch and experience.

Tiffany’s profoundly innovative contribution to glassmaking was in the nature of the glass he used and the way he used it. His opalescent glass, also called American glass, was more brilliant than the glass generally available, and, most importantly, it possessed great variety of color, tone, and texture within a single piece of glass. Most stained-glass artists and craftsmen at the time were using glass that was uniformly colored, translucent, and very regular in every way. Windows made from this type of glass depended on enameling for form and visual effects. By using opalescent glass—with its colors, streaks, bubbles, ripples, and folds—Tiffany created pictorial mosaics that transformed the art. Tiffany applied for and received patents for his modifications and improvements upon opalescent glass, though John La Farge first patented the underlying process for opalescent glass in 1879.

By adding opalescent glass to his available repertoire, Tiffany had a far richer palette for creating ornamental windows in the mosaic tradition. Opalescent glass became the material of choice for many designers until World War I when rich color shading and other 19th-century painting effects were replaced by new styles favoring linear, flat, and often abstract form.