DATE: Saturday, April 19, 1997              TAG: 9704180062

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS

        STAFF WRITER

                                            LENGTH:  181 lines

MASTER IN GLASS

CUTTING THROUGH the icy blue galleries of fine silver at The Chrysler Museum of Art, a visitor at last spies warmth.

The Tiffany hearth is not lit, to be sure. But the rose-colored tiles and carved wooden mantel are a beacon for admirers of Tiffany's output, considered by many to be the highest expression of American Art Nouveau glass and design.

Above the vase-lined mantel reads the exhibit's title: ``The Decorative Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany,'' a show that includes nearly the full, surprising range of works from Tiffany's turn-of-the-century studios.

The silver and Tiffany shows - opening tonight to museum members, and Sunday to the public - flow one into the other. They were pulled together from the museum's permanent collections and timed to coincide with the upcoming Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival.

While both displays are expected to be popular, the Tiffany should be especially so.

Think about it: Here is a museum that possesses an encyclopedic collection of world art. And within the Chrysler is a museum unto itself, the vast and world-renowned Institute of Glass, which spans ancient times to the present.

And within that institute is a sumptuous collection of Tiffany objects. In a museum with many high points, the Tiffany hits a peak.

While lots of folks know about Tiffany lamps, they may have never laid eyes on a real one. And there's a huge difference between the mass-produced Tiffany-style lamps hanging in pizza parlors and the bona fide item.

But Tiffany designed much more - including enamels, stained glass windows, ceramics, flower form vases, desk accessories, picture frames and bronze portrait busts.

Through the summer, several hundred Tiffany objects will be on view at the Chrysler. Numerous pieces have never been exhibited, including the mantel that was designed in 1899 for mining executive Howell Hines' Cleveland mansion.

Other works haven't been shown since the mid-1980s, when the Chrysler's previous glass galleries were dismantled to make way for the 1989 reinstallation. A late 19th century mahogany library table not displayed since 1986 was probably used in one of Tiffany's country houses.

``Between what we have on permanent display, and what is in the show that is normally in storage, visitors can probably see close to 90 percent of our Tiffany holdings,'' said Gary Baker, the museum's glass curator.

That's the most that has been on view since the museum's chief benefactor, the late Walter P. Chrysler Jr., brought his collection to Norfolk in 1971.

The 150-piece changing exhibit barely put a dent in the glass institute's permanent Tiffany galleries. There are a few empty spaces among the rows of spotlit displays for amazing vases. And a handful of other items have been temporarily filched for the special show.

Otherwise, there was plenty to go around.

The Tiffany holdings can't be hyped; among fans, the Chrysler's Tiffany blown glass collection is deemed the world's finest and most comprehensive - better than that owned by the Louvre, the Metropolitan or The Corning (N.Y.) Museum of Glass.

Last year, a Japanese film crew showed up at the Chrysler to produce a television special on the Tiffany. ``They had a Japanese film star interview me, and they dubbed it into Japanese,'' said Baker, amused. ``Who knows what they made me say?''

The crew was tipped off by Takeo Horiuchi, owner of a private Tiffany museum in Nagoya, Japan.

``Why did they choose the Chrysler? Because we have one of the greatest Tiffany collections in the world, and they know it. And Mr. Horiuchi has made a point of buying things just like the Tiffany pieces in our catalog.''

Tiffany's affinity for Asian art and artifacts can be seen in the works on view.

When Baker - who has lectured widely on Tiffany - looks at the designer's forms and decorations, he sees how Tiffany borrowed from early Chinese cameo glass and patterns on old Japanese sword guards.

Tiffany's influences were as diverse and plentiful as blossoms in an English garden.

On the one hand, he was looking to the past. Ancient glass, in particular, inspired him to develop an iridescent surface that mimicked the glimmering, prismatic appearance of long-buried glass.

And he was a great observer of nature.

In the 1914 vanity book Tiffany commissioned to memorialize himself and his work, the designer chose to portray himself with a 1911 painting by Joaquin Sorolla of the artist at his easel in a flower garden.

``Clearly, this is the way that Tiffany saw himself - in his garden, trying to capture the fleeting beauty of Nature,'' wrote Martin Eidelberg for his essay in the 1989 exhibit catalog, ``Masterworks of Louis Comfort Tiffany.''

The Chrysler is exhibiting a first edition of that Charles de Kay book, along with the printer's dummy containing the original photographic plates. From those plates, the museum reproduced the Sorolla painting, now blown up as a color poster in the gallery.

Other photo enlargements show scenes from his Madison Avenue home, and of Laurelton Hall, his 1904 Long Island summer house that looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. Both were exotic Art Nouveau environments, with Persian-style lamps dangled in clusters from the ceiling, stuffed storks and peacocks perched on balconies and gurgling fountains.

But this is not an exhibit in which photos substitute for objects.

``See this. This is rare as hen's teeth,'' said Baker, indicating a 1890s clear glass vase engraved with a lady-slipper design.

``This is the highest expression of the Art Nouveau esthetic in American engraved glass.''

He didn't mean that sort of vase. He meant that particular one. The vase was purchased in the fall, and is among four gap-filling Tiffany pieces acquired since Chrysler's death in September 1988.

A large flower form vase then drew Baker's attention. Green threading over a clear form suggested a leafy base then trailed up the stem to meet an opalescent white bowl. Its rim undulated like a delicate spring blossom.

``This is one of the greatest objects we own - period,'' said Baker, even counting a Bernini bust, a Matisse and a Renoir.

``It is one of the greatest pieces of American blown glass in existence. Do you see how the edge billows out there? And all this work was done at the furnace, and they had to control it just right. And they didn't have a lot of time.''

Walter Chrysler began collecting Tiffany objects around 1959. But the collector had met the great designer many years before.

He wrote about the encounter in an introduction to the museum's 1977 catalog of the Tiffany collection.

Chrysler - namesake and son of the automobile magnate - summered with his family at King's Point on the north shore of Long Island. His first business venture was Cheshire House, a publishing firm that quickly earned honors.

``Laurelton Hall . . . was not far from King's Point, and being the gentleman that he was, Mr. Tiffany appeared one day in the summer of 1931 at our home to pay his respects to the young publisher. His invitation to visit Laurelton Hall and the painting studios of The Tiffany Foundation on his Oyster Bay estate resulted in a short but memorable friendship of two years,'' Chrysler wrote.

``No one could visit Laurelton Hall - a white mosque-like palace, reflecting his love of travel, particularly in North Africa - without entering the heart and mind of one of the most creative and imaginative taste-makers the United States has produced.''

Clearly, Tiffany made a lasting impression on Chrysler. He began collecting with some intensity after the 1958 show of Tiffany works at New York's Museum of Contemporary Crafts, the first of a series of shows which helped fuel a reassessment of the undervalued creator.

While the museum shies from money talk, it is widely understood that Chrysler bought pieces in the 1960s and '70s for hundreds or thousands of dollars that are now garnering six figures at auctions.

The retired glass curator, Nancy Merrill, tells a story about how Chrysler bought a Tiffany object twice; after it was sold by a museum, he found it in a shop and purchased it again.

That's how much Tiffany Chrysler handled in his time. His enthusiasm never waned.

Tiffany had begun as a painter, then turned his attentions by 1880 to the decorative arts. From then until about 1919, he designed windows, vases and the like that were carried out by skilled craftsmen.

He died in 1933 - five years before his firm went under. That was fortunate, Chrysler wrote: ``It would have broken his heart had he seen Tiffany studios, and his dream, destroyed.''

But given the resurgence of passion for things Tiffany, it was only a dream deferred. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]

Photos courtesy of the Chrysler Museum

Louis Tiffany among flowers in 1911 painting by Joaquin Sorolla.

Tiffany took that fleeting beauty and out it into imperishable

glass.

Vase Engraved with Lady Slipper, c. 1896

"Flowering Lotus" Lamp, c. 1905

Lava Vase, c. 1918

Flower-Form, c. 1896

Photos courtesy of Chrysler Museum

Above: ``Cameo Bowl,'' (1907), a Louis Tiffany work

Left: ``Electric Nautilus Reading Lamp,'' (1899), Tiffany Glass and