Tiffany Favrile Pottery
Skunk Cabbage Vase

American, circa 1905
Height: 6 1/2 inches
Diameter: 4 1/2 inches

Like many of Tiffany Studios most successful Favrile Pottery designs, this sculptural vase takes the form of a living plant. This vase is based on a sketch by Alice Carmen Gouvy (1863-1924), a designer and one of the select “Tiffany Girls” working in the specialized Pottery and Enamel Department at Louis Comfort Tiffany’s complex in Corona, Queens.

In this example, the irregular leaves of the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), a common North American wetland plant, have been translated into gleaming Favrile Pottery.

Sprouting from the ground in shades of variegated green-brown with nearly black lowlights, the heavily veined, overlapping leaves taper to narrow points, leaving vertical strips of negative space as they stretch upward. A number of elements from the vase can be directly traced back to Gouvy's sketch, including the form itself and the orientation of specific leaves.

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art acquired a series of studies by “Tiffany Girl” Alice Gouvy (accession no. 2020-007) in watercolor and pencil which portray the skunk cabbage from several angles, a choice which would have aided in translating two dimensional sketches into a three dimensional vase. This sketch, which features various production notes from Tiffany Furnaces in addition to Gouvy's signature, was unveiled in the exhibition “Watercolors from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s ‘Little Arcadia’” in 2021.

American, circa 1905
Height: 6 1/2 inches
Diameter: 4 1/2 inches

Like many of Tiffany Studios most successful Favrile Pottery designs, this sculptural vase takes the form of a living plant. This vase is based on a sketch by Alice Carmen Gouvy (1863-1924), a designer and one of the select “Tiffany Girls” working in the specialized Pottery and Enamel Department at Louis Comfort Tiffany’s complex in Corona, Queens.

In this example, the irregular leaves of the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), a common North American wetland plant, have been translated into gleaming Favrile Pottery.

Sprouting from the ground in shades of variegated green-brown with nearly black lowlights, the heavily veined, overlapping leaves taper to narrow points, leaving vertical strips of negative space as they stretch upward. A number of elements from the vase can be directly traced back to Gouvy's sketch, including the form itself and the orientation of specific leaves.

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art acquired a series of studies by “Tiffany Girl” Alice Gouvy (accession no. 2020-007) in watercolor and pencil which portray the skunk cabbage from several angles, a choice which would have aided in translating two dimensional sketches into a three dimensional vase. This sketch, which features various production notes from Tiffany Furnaces in addition to Gouvy's signature, was unveiled in the exhibition “Watercolors from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s ‘Little Arcadia’” in 2021.