Vase 1893

Curator: This beautiful piece is simply titled "Vase," created around 1893 by Louis Comfort Tiffany. You can find it here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: Oh, wow, it's…liquid sunlight. Or, you know, like a solidified drop of honey catching the rainbow just so. The swirling form is quite striking! Curator: The swirling is what intrigues me most. There's this very deliberate geometry to the vase’s organic shape. It makes you wonder, is Tiffany trying to control nature or somehow embody it? Editor: Definitely both, right? That twist reminds me of those ancient serpent symbols representing cyclical time, and the alchemy of transformation. But here, it’s expressed in glass. The iridescence seems like captured moonlight. Curator: Indeed. What I admire about Art Nouveau, which is in full evidence here, is the pursuit of natural beauty rendered through the cutting-edge processes of the time. He really makes this iridescent glass sing. Editor: The texture is almost tactile – one feels a longing to trace the swirling lines, to experience that fluidity firsthand. Plus, consider glass itself: fragile, yet capable of holding form, reflecting and refracting light. All potent symbols! What was Tiffany trying to tell us? Curator: That's the wonderful enigma. Maybe that nature is ever mutable, as mercurial as a dance? Tiffany elevated these functional forms to almost devotional objects. What better way to consecrate daily living? Editor: Yes! And with those pearly colours and subtle optical changes... it transcends simple glass-blowing. I am touched to imagine it on some gilded mantel piece catching the light. It is not an overstatement to call it a marvel. It really transports me. Curator: It transports me too. Editor: Definitely more sunlight in sculptural form. Thank you!