Design

Literature

Tiffany Studios, A Partial List of Windows, Tiffany Studios, New York, 1910, p. 103 (St. Paul's Presbyterian listed in census)
Alastair Duncan, Tiffany Windows, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1980, p. 221 (St. Paul's Presbyterian listed in census)
Rosalind M. Pepall, ed., Tiffany: Color and Light, pp. 110-111 (for a discussion and illustration of glass used by Tiffany Studios in leaded windows)

The Twin Roses of St. Paul's:
A rare market appearance for a famed window design

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), son of Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812-1902), began experimenting with glass in the 1870s, and by the 1890s his firm Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company (later renamed Tiffany Studios) was one of the most influential and widely-acclaimed designers of interiors and decorative arts, commissioned to produce interiors for public and civic projects as well as the homes of the Gilded Age's elite. Along with John La Farge (1835-1910), Tiffany created a "renaissance in stained glass." Working with patents for opalescent glass alongside colored, plated, textured, flashed, etched, and enameled glass, artists at Tiffany's glass studio in Corona, Queens, New York, created masterworks of leaded glass windows, lighting, and free-blown vases and decorative objects.

New sources of wealth in America following the Civil War coupled with socio-religious factors that saw the creation of new or refurbished religious edifices in the modern taste. Set high in the chapel of St. Paul’s Presbyterian, these brightly colored roses are illustrative of the aesthetic and spiritual impact Tiffany’s art in glass had on their commissioning congregations. The windows feature leaded mottled, opalescent, dichroic, streaky, acid-etched, and ripple glass in vibrant hues, with each type of glass employed to magnify the effect of the whole. The symbolic imagery present is minimal yet powerful: one rose is centered by a crown (representing Christ), and the other a dove (representing the Holy Spirit). When hit by the light, the layered glass reveals a cross at the center of the dove — an example of Tiffany’s ability to employ his distinct processes to heighten the emotional sensation of his designs.

Rescued from imminent demolition, the rose windows from St. Paul’s Presbyterian are a rare market appearance for such large, complex, and unusual windows by America’s most famous art glass designer.

The Rose Windows from Hickman Temple AME Church (formerly St. Paul's Presbyterian), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Tiffany Studios

Julie L. Sloan, Stained-Glass Consultant

Lake Placid, NY

If there was one thing Tiffany Studios did well (and of course, there were so many more than one), it was selecting glass colors that inspire awe. Always interested in the effects of the sun as it progresses through the day, these windows represent that entire diurnal cycle. Deepest night is at the outer edges, the deep purple sky brightened by a single star in each petal of the rose. This transitions to dawn in a small bright band of turquoise between increasingly bright, sunny golds. A middle band of bright green arches, reminiscent of young spring leaves in the morning sunlight, shades into even brighter yellow at the base of each petal. The brightness culminates in the center quatrefoil depicting the crown of glory in one window and the sacred dove in the other. Each one radiates the daily glory of light over earth.

The rose window was a medieval invention, first used in the Church of St. Denis in Paris in the twelfth century. Its round shape represented the heavens and eternity. Most roses had stone spokes evoking a wheel or a flower. No matter the divisions within the circle, rose windows tend to be the most memorable in a church. Even in the Middle Ages, designers lavished great attention on them, and by the turn of the twentieth century, with the brilliant effects available in opalescent glass, even a small rose window shone with brilliance and majesty. Tiffany Studios often used spectacular specimens of glass in their rose windows, as in two created for the Columbian Exposition in 1893 with their many borders of jewels. Several other ornamental roses like these, with kaleidoscopic color effects, can be found in Vassar College Chapel, the Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, NJ, and the Chapel at West Parish in Andover, MA.

The church, originally St. Paul’s Presbyterian in Philadelphia, was completed in 1906 and supported in part by master merchant John Wanamaker, owner of the eponymous Philadelphia department store. Wanamaker was not a member of the church, but he was a dedicated and passionate Presbyterian who lent his support to many evangelical causes. The newspapers that covered its dedication did not mention that the windows were by Tiffany Studios, but the church was included in Tiffany Studio’s 1910 list of their commissions with a “Wanamaker Memorial.” No window in St. Paul’s was ever called that, and John Wanamaker lived until 1922, long after the windows were installed. It is possible that he had something to do with the commissioning of the windows from Tiffany and the studio simply referred to the project by his name.

In 1972, the congregation of St. Paul’s sold the building to the Hickman Temple AME Church, which closed ca. 2021.