Summer 2017

Summer 110 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com top Fig. 6 : Jacques Marquette’s Expedition. Detail of frieze depicting Marquette’s death, Marquette Building, Chicago, Ill., 1895. Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, designed by Jacob Adolphus Holzer (American, b. Switzerland, 1858–1938). Image: The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. bottom Fig. 7 : The Last Supper, reredos, 1897. Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, designed by Frederick Wilson (British, b. Ireland, 1858–1932). Glass mosaic. First Independent Church of Baltimore (now First Unitarian Church), Baltimore, Md. Image: The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. mosaics were especially appealing. The company executed several large glass mosaic commissions as a wave of speculative construction swept through Chicago following the World’s Fair in 1893. One example is the masterful figural frieze that still decorates the balcony of the entrance hall of the Marquette building (Fig. 5). Depicting key scenes from the North American expeditions of Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette (French, 1637–1675) and Louis Joliet (French-Canadian, 1645–1700) (Fig. 6), the frieze is composed of eleven panels with two hundred thousand pieces of glass and ten thousand “pieces of [mother-of ]-pearl,” and took one year to complete. One reviewer noted: “Portions of these panels are almost as cleverly colored as though done by brush, instead of piecing and matching.”  2 Designed by Jacob A. Holzer (b. Switzerland, 1858– 1938), the complex composition brilliantly showed off Tiffany’s unique approach to mosaic composition, using glass in inventive ways to lavishly depict a uniquely American subject. While the design for The Last Supper (Fig. 7), a reredos panel commissioned by the members of the First Independent Church of Baltimore, Maryland, drew upon historical representations in Christian art, the vivid, sophisticated use of glass demonstrated the skills of Tiffany’s talented artisans who selected and cut the