While known today primarily for his elaborate lamps, favrile vases, and magnificent
stained glass, Louis Comfort Tiffany was in his day also a sought-after interior designer,
pioneering the concept of the home as a unified artistic masterwork. An amazingly
versatile artist, Tiffany applied his design skills successfully to every residential feature,
including lighting, mosaic-, plaster-, and woodwork, textiles and furnishings, and of
course, art glass. Preservationist Jeanne Pelletier examines Tiffany’s ground-breaking
interior designs and chronicles the 25-year effort to preserve his last surviving residential
commission, Boston’s Ayer Mansion, completed in 1902 for entrepreneur Frederick Ayer
and his charismatic wife, Ellen Banning Ayer.