Iridescent Vases & the Art Nouveau Movement

The Oxford dictionary defines iridescent as showing rainbow-like luminous or gleaming colors, - or - changing colors with position. The word iridescent comes from the Greek word Iris, the goddess associated with the rainbow. That rainbow would come to be associated with vases during the Art Nouveau movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

The Origin of Iridescent Vases
The style known as Art Nouveau received its name from a Parisian shop, the Maison de l'Art Nouveau. It was there that owner and art dealer Siegfried Bing displayed the works of those artists who would become synonymous with the style of Art Nouveau and its emphasis on curving, flowing, and undulating modern lines.

As a way to determine how popular the Art Nouveau style would be abroad, Bing also held exhibits in other cities. One of them in London in 1895 focused on iridescent vases. There were two artists on display. One was Clement Massier, with his iridescent ceramic vases. The other was an American, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and his iridescent glass vases.

The Iridescent Vases of Clement Massier
Ceramics had been the Massier family business since the 18th Century, but it was Clement whose metallic luster glazes would create the iridescent vases now synonymous with his name.

To achieve this iridescent look, Massier's vases were underglazed twice, first at 1840 F and again at 1696 F. As the vases were cooling, they would be painted with a solvent or liquid oil mixed with gold, copper, red ochre, silver carbonate, or another substance, creating an oil stained appearance before the iridescent vase was fired a third and final time.

The finished vases are dreamlike and very beautiful, combining swirling patterns of liquid oil with gleaming iridescence atop ceramic, porcelain, or earthenware.

The Iridescent Vases of Louis Comfort Tiffany
Favrile was the French name Tiffany gave to his patented iridescent art glass in 1893. Tiffany had studied in Paris when he was young, and during that time, he was exposed to the early works of the Art Nouveau group.

Lamps made from iridescent Favrile glass were exhibited by Tiffany at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, but it was the London exhibit of 1895 that displayed his iridescent glass vases to the world.

The use of glass rather than ceramic gave Tiffany's iridescent vases a lurid quality that Massier's could not possess. These highly original iridescent vases, now more than a century old, are sold at auctions today for thousands of dollars.