Welcome: Stained Glass Window from the Mrs. George T. Bliss House, New York

Welcome: Stained Glass Window from the Mrs. George T. Bliss House, New York

John La Farge

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

John La Farge was Louis Comfort Tiffany’s closest rival in the use of opalescent, colored, and textured glass. This window, completed the year before La Farge’s death, was one of his most complex works. Commissioned in 1908 by Mrs. George T. Bliss for her house at 9 East Sixty-Eighth Street in New York City, it features a young woman in classical garb welcoming visitors while drawing back a portiere—a replication in glass of a Chinese embroidered textile originally owned by the Bliss family. The cloisonné technique of joining together many tiny pieces of glass was used to evoke folds in the figure’s gown. Decorative panels with garlands and Pompeian ornament frame the window. The work took over a year to complete, but La Farge considered it “the finest piece of glass ever made. . . . I am proud of it beyond what I can explain.”

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Welcome: Stained Glass Window from the Mrs. George T. Bliss House, New YorkWelcome: Stained Glass Window from the Mrs. George T. Bliss House, New YorkWelcome: Stained Glass Window from the Mrs. George T. Bliss House, New YorkWelcome: Stained Glass Window from the Mrs. George T. Bliss House, New YorkWelcome: Stained Glass Window from the Mrs. George T. Bliss House, New York

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.