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Designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, circa 1890.
Tiffany first began experimenting with glass art in 1873. He opened the Tiffany Glass Company in 1885; it then became the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company and later Tiffany Studios. After designing hundreds of beautiful windows for churches, public buildings and homes of his wealthy clients, Tiffany became one of the most well-known glass designers in the United States, and his reputation for experimentation in stained glass techniques and originality in design is unsurpassed.
The Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows is a permanent display of 150 stained glass windows housed in an 800-ft.-long series of galleries along the lower level terraces of Festival Hall at Navy Pier in Chicago. Open since February 2000, it is the first museum in the United States dedicated solely to stained glass windows. It showcases both secular and religious windows and is divided by artistic theme into four categories: Victorian, Prairie, Modern and Contemporary. All of the windows were designed by prominent local, national and European studios and most were originally installed in Chicago area residential, commercial and religious buildings.
The windows provide unique insight into Chicago's cultural, ethnic and artistic history. The time period they represent, 1870 to the present, was an era of intense urban revision that featured the development, decline and revitalization of neighborhoods, the development of commercial and cultural institutions, the evolution of artistic styles and the response of various ethnic groups to these changes. The religious windows reveal the national and ethnic styles of Chicago's European immigrants, while the residential windows display the history of architecture and decorative art styles.
Photo captured March 10, 2012.
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