Kokomo Art Glass

Tiffany was odd in that he liked imperfections in the glass, which up to this point had been completely transparent in appearance and now know as cathedral glass. When Tiffany was unable to convince glass makers to leave impurities in their glass, he began making his own glass. Tiffany used opalescent glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a unique style of stained glass. This is in contrast to the method of painting in enamels or glass paint on colorless glass that had been the dominate method of creating stained glass for hundreds of years in Europe. The use of colored glass itself to create stained glass pictures was motivated in part by the ideology of the Arts and Crafts movement lead by William Morris from England.

Kokomo Glass, then known as The Opalescent Glass Works, specialized in this incredible new American style of glass – opalescent. Their long history of award winning glass began with the 1889 Paris, Exposition Universelle where they received their own gold medal. Even as Tiffany’s own glass factory in Corona, NY was open, he purchased glass from Kokomo Opalescent Glass. Many stained glass innovations are attributed to Mr. Tiffany and can still be found in Kokomo Opalescent Glass today is their use of strong color, a huge variety of textures including ripple glass, mottled glass (glass with areas of opaque and translucent spots of color), and marbleized (two or more opaque colors swirled together).

Kokomo Glass still produces nearly all of the same colors that Mr. Tiffany utilized in his work and have developed new colors and textures that resembles glass produced in his furnaces during that time period. Over the years Kokomo Glass has been called upon to create cast pieces to resemble those that Mr. Tiffany used.