The Cincinnati Art Museum recently acquired four rare Tiffany stained glass windows. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Tiffany Studios produced thousands of religion-inspired stained glass windows, more than half of which have been lost. The windows recently acquired and restored by the Cincinnati Art Museum were originally commissioned for the St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in nearby Avondale, which closed on Easter Sunday 2008. They will be displayed with the Museum’s collection of Tiffany blown glass vases.
To give an idea of how common they were: seven eight-feet-tall windows designed by Tiffany representing the seven messengers of God from the book of Revelation were rediscovered in 2001 only 15 miles away in a Glendale, OH parish. (They were stored in a parishioner’s garage for almost 40 years until a newly arrived minister found them “in the barn.”) Currently, the messengers are on exhibit in “In Company with Angels” at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama until March 17, 2013. At one time, there were over ten thousand Tiffany windows in churches across the United States. Susan Vreeland, the author of the bestselling novel “Clara and Mr. Tiffany” has arranged an impressive list, alphabetically by city.
