Booklist Review

Like Ballinger's Frederick Remington [BKL D 15 89] and Hassrick's Charles M. Russell [BKL Ag 89] before it, the newest in Abrams' wonderful monograph series the Library of American Art attends seriously to a figure once considered irredeemably popular and commercial. Louis Comfort is the Tiffany of the exquisitely colorful glass lamps, vases, mosaics, and memorial windows that are turn-of-the-century American hallmarks. He was also inarguably a tradesman-artist whose business acumen made him even wealthier than, as scion of New York retailer Charles Lewis Tiffany, he was born. So the life story Duncan tells is that of a business as much as a person. Indeed, Duncan admits that "practically nothing is known of Tiffany beyond, or apart from, his art." This makes for a sparse text without the kind of interpretation other volumes in the Library have essayed. But it also allows lots of beautifully printed pictures of the lovely articles with which Tiffany, quite apart from making a fortune, sought to bring beauty into middle-class American homes. ~--Ray Olson