Trifold Screen (Primary Title)
Associated Artists, American, active 1881 - 1883 (Artist)
This opulent screen once stood in the library of William S. Kimball’s Rochester, New York, residence, one of the great “artistic houses” of the Gilded Age. The mansion’s Aesthetic interiors were decorated and furnished by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Company, Associated Artists and featured South Asian and Middle Eastern patterns and motifs. The screen – comprised of two painted panels flanking a lattice crafted of twisted wire and glass “jewels” – recalls the appliquéd arabesques of Suzani textiles, indigenous to the city of Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan). An avid world traveler from the time of his youth, Tiffany included Suzani fabrics in his vast collection of international artifacts and objects d’art.
Despite the company’s success – its commissions included the White House (1883) – the partnership of Associated Artists lasted only four years until 1883, when L.C. Tiffany and Company became an independent concern. By then, former associate Lockwood de Forest was established in India, where he crafted the large, intricate frame for Edwin Lord Weeks’s painting of the Pearl Mosque (2008.40).
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