KERAMIC STUDIO 
FAVRILE GLASS 
KatJierine M. Huger 
T has been said that the history of glass is the his- 
tory of civilization — from the opaque blue glass 
found at Thebes down to the time of the Jewish 
captivity when Egypt was particularly rich in 
treasures of artistic glass making. From the 
Egyptians this art passed to the Phoenicians, thence to the 
Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, later to the 
Venetians, the window makers of the Middle Ages, and finally 
to the artists of our own day. 
It would seem as if the whole art of glass making must 
have been explicated during these epochs, yet the recently 
discovered Favrile glass is believed to be an entirely new 
formula, the outcome of a number of experiments carried 
on by Mr. Louis Tiffany of New York. Picture to yourself the 
beauty of a soap bubble, the shifting sun-lit clouds, the magic 
colors of a flame ! Silver shimmers and golden webs — trans- 
ably while the glass is in a fluid state other qualities and 
colors of glass are dropped into it directed by the craftsman 
and the artist. When the glass is blown these art forms and 
colors grow with the form itself, making a beautiful whole; 
not a form decorated, but a decorated form created. "The 
part is in the whole." Of course texture can be modified by 
rolling — some parts of the surface left smooth, others crinkled, 
or sown with bubbles as some writer has expressed it ; then 
another variety is obtained by blowing the lustre over the 
parent, opaque, lustrous, irridescent — from rainbow hues to the 
deep sea's blues and greens blended with a craftsman's skill 
and guided by an artist's inspiration into forms of grace and 
beauty — and you have a faint conception of what the Favrile 
glass is. Its artistic suggestiveness and the readiness with 
which it combines with itself, color with color and glass over 
glass, has led to the production of a number of beautiful 
objects, each one marked by a strong individuality, not only 
novel in color and form, but enhanced by carving, and by 
cutting through one layer of glass down to one of another 
color, by enrichments of metallic lustres, and irridescent irra- 
diations of scintillating colored lights rivaling the opal, en- 
trancing the artist and delighting the connoisseur. The glass 
is said to be not only boundless in color but non-absorbent whole or parts, inside or out; thus its delicate susceptibility to 
and practically indestructible. How it is made is quite handling enables the artist to express his most poetic fancy in 
another matter, a secret that can only be guessed at. Prob- color and in form. No doubt suggestions arise firing the 
