Tiffany, virtuoso designer.(Current and coming)(Louis Comfort Tiffany)

For those who did not grow up with an iPod in one hand and a computer mouse in the other, Louis Comfort Tiffany is a familiar name. His prolific contributions in many mediums were internationally influential. This month more than 120 examples of Tiffany's output in glass, stained glass, furniture, paintings, metalwork, mosaics, enamels, jewelry, and ceramics have been assembled to form an overview of his career. Working with Exhibitions International, Marilynn A. Johnson has organized this traveling exhibition entitled Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages for the Seattle Art Museum, where it is on view from October 13 to January 4, 2006.

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In 1881 and 1882 a group of interiors designed by Tiffany for the Fifth Avenue mansion of George Kemp, were published in Artistic Houses. The writer, describing a room filled with objects in a number of different stylistic idioms, noted: "The more carefully the spectator examines into details, the more confident is his conviction that not one article of furniture or ornamentation in this artistic apartment was put there save under the guidance of an intelligent purpose faithfully exercised and lavishly equipped." This thoughtful attention to the smallest detail might well be said to be a hallmark of everything Tiffany and his dedicated craftsmen designed and produced. Indeed a story that is perhaps apocryphal describes Tiffany walking through his storerooms wielding his walking stick to smash anything that did not live up to his exacting standards.

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Tiffany was active during an immensely fertile period in the arts, marked by discoveries, innovations, reinterpretations, and borrowings. Novelty was ...