Beschreibung:

Garden Feature: A carved white marble pedestalItalian late 19th century now converted with copper armillary sphere 158cm.; 62ins highProvenance: Laurelton Hall Long Island New York the home of Louis Comfort Tiffany The son of Charles Louis Tiffany founder of the eponymous jewellery business Tiffany and Co Louis Comfort Tiffany 1848-1933 is best known for his designs in stained glass in the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic styles. The 65-room mansion on 600 acres of land was completed in 1905 and housed many of Tiffanys most notable works as well as serving as a work of art itself.Laurelton Hall served as home for a school for artists run by Tiffany and his Foundation beginning in 1918. The Laurelton Hall grounds also eventually contained a separate building which housed the Tiffany Chapel originally made for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and numerous Tiffany windows and a separate art gallery building. Laurelton Hall eventually fell into disrepair in the years after Tiffanys death was sold by the Foundation in 1949 and burned down in 1957. The estate cost about $2 000 000 to build and landscape and was eventually sold for $10 000. The majority of windows and other surviving architectural pieces were salvaged by Hugh McKean and Jeannette Genius McKean of the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art and shipped to Winter Park Florida after the fire. A major retrospective of Laurelton Hall opened at New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art in November 2006. In 2010 the Morse Museum announced that it is building new galleries at a cost of $5 million. The galleries will have 6 000 square feet of space to display Tiffany work from Laurelton Hall.This lot originally stood in front of Laurelton Hall as the base for an elaborate cast iron fountain. Following the 1957 fire the estate was split up and the base was relocated to the vendors garden in the Laurelton Hall grounds and re-configured as a sundial before being shipped to the UK