Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 - January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who is best known for his work in stained glass and is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau movement. Tiffany was a painter and interior decorator and designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels and metalwork.
L. C. Tiffany was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of the world-famous Tiffany and Company. He went to school at the Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His first artistic training was as a painter, studying under George Inness and Samuel Coleman in New York, and Léon Bailly in Paris. In the late 1870s he became interested in glassmaking and in 1885 he founded his own glassmaking firm, where he pursued using opalescent glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a uniquely American style of stained glass. This can be contrasted with the method of painting in glass paint or enamels on colorless glass that had been the dominant method of creating stained glass for several hundred years in Europe. Use of the colored glass itself to create stained glass pictures was motivated by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and its leader William Morris in England. Fellow artist and glassmaker John La Farge was Tiffany's chief competitor in this new American style of stained glass.
In 1893 his company introduced the term, Favrile in conjuction with his first production of blown glass at his new glass factory in Corona, new York. He trademarked Favrile on November 13, 1894. He later used this word to apply to all of his glass, enamel and pottery. Much of his company's production was in making stained glass windows and lamps, but his company designed a complete range of interior decorations. He used all his skills in the design of his own house, the 84-room Laurelton Hall, in Oyster Bay, Long Island, completed in 1904. Later this estate was donated to his foundation for art students along with 60 acres (243,000 m²) of land, but destroyed by a fire in 1957.
Among the companies that he founded were L.C. Tiffany & Associated Artists, the Tiffany Glass Company, Tiffany Studios, Tiffany Furnaces, and the L.C. Tiffany Furnaces.
L. C. Tiffany became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1877, the National Academy of Design in 1880, the American Water Color Society, and the Societé des Beaux Arts. In 1900, he became a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He died on January 17, 1933, and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn, New York, USA.