Laurelton Hall, built between 1902 and 1905 on Long Island, is arguably Tiffany’s greatest work of art. In his 84-room, eight-level mansion, set on almost 600 acres overlooking Cold Spring Harbor and Long Island Sound, Tiffany integrated into one rapturous whole all the passions and preoccupations of his life—color, light, nature and the art of Eastern and Islamic cultures.
In 1957 every room and architectural detail of Laurelton Hall, designed
and controlled by Tiffany, was destroyed by fire.
After the fire in 1957, Hugh F. McKean and his wife, Jeannette, who together
assembled the Morse Museum’s collection, salvaged architectural elements,
windows and other objects from the ruins of the estate. Over the next four
decades, they continued to search out and collect objects from the estate that
earlier had been auctioned, sold or given away. The Morse is the largest single
repository of surviving materials from Laurelton Hall.
2011 Museum Expansion
In February 2011, The Morse Museum of American Art opened to the public, a
new 12,000 square foot wing to showcase Tiffany's famed Daffodil Terrace and
over 250 Art Objects and Architectural elements from and related to Laurelton
Hall. The 11 new galleries at the Morse showcase surviving components of
Laurelton Hall’s dining room, living room and reception hall—also known as the
Fountain Court—as well as other rooms, creating a uniquely immersive experience.
“The new galleries will suggest aspects of the actual rooms designed and
decorated by Tiffany during his lifetime,” said Laurence J. Ruggiero, director
of the Morse Museum. “Visitors can no longer go to Laurelton Hall to appreciate
Tiffany’s approach to design, but they can come to the Morse and, we hope, gain
a more holistic sense of the man, his aesthetic, and the power of his
imagination.”
Photographs of interiors from the much-published estate aided the museum’s
efforts to suggest the true experience of Laurelton Hall. Working with the Morse
Museum’s staff, George Sexton Associates of Washington, D.C., designed the
lighting and installations in the museum’s new addition to evoke the essence of
Tiffany’s design vision.
“Laurelton Hall was Tiffany’s masterpiece, and it housed a self-curated
collection of Tiffany Studios’ production,” said Curator and Collection Manager
Jennifer Perry Thalheimer. “The objects he put in his home and the way he
arranged them reflected his perpetual quest for beauty.”
Expansion Highlights
The Daffodil Terrace, installed in a new glass-enclosed gallery, serving as a
focal point for the new wing. The 18-by-32-foot outdoor room exemplifies
Tiffany’s unique and dramatic style. Supported by eight 11-foot marble columns
topped with bouquets of glass daffodils, the terrace’s coffered ceiling is
composed of hundreds of stenciled wood elements and molded tiles in three bays.
The central bay features a skylight covered by six large panels of
iridescent-glass tiles in a pear-tree motif. The terrace, pieced together from
more than 600 distinct parts and fragments, is the museum’s most significant
conservation project since reassembling Tiffany’s chapel interior from the 1893
World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The conservation team, headed by
Griswold Conservation Associates LLC, of Culver City, California, was able to
reconstruct the terrace using old black-and-white photographs, historical
descriptions and computer technology.
The terrace is visible from vantage points both inside and outside the museum.
Situated with a view of an expanded garden courtyard at the museum, the Daffodil
Terrace, is presented in a manner related to its original location at Laurelton
Hall.
Highlights from the dining-room installation include: a 13.5-foot-high,
mosaic-decorated marble mantelpiece that is one of Tiffany’s most
forward-looking designs; a 25-foot-long Oriental rug; a domed leaded-glass
chandelier 6.5 feet in diameter; and a suite of six leaded-glass wisteria
transoms.
The living room installation showcases four leaded-glass panels depicting the
four seasons—each from a single large window from the Tiffany exhibit at the
Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, for which the artist won a gold medal.
Five turtleback-glass hanging lamps suspended from an iron oxbow fixture made to
the specifications of Tiffany’s original serve as the focal point for the
gallery.
From the art gallery Tiffany built on the estate, the Morse is showing the pair
of intricately carved Indian teak doors and half-moon-shaped glass mosaic that
graced the entryway. The centerpiece of the mosaic is a peacock-feather-motif
window in leaded glass.
Another new gallery serves as a study room and includes accessible copies of
books that were in Tiffany’s personal library. Together the art objects and
installations work to provide context for understanding Tiffany’s originality
and enduring appeal.
