This exceptional window, an ode to the bounty of autumn, stands among the finest windows produced by Tiffany for domestic interiors, utilizing elements of important early designs by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Agnes F. Northrop. Incorporating large panels of “confetti” or “foliage” glass and pressed glass “jewels,” this masterpiece dates to a pivotal period when Tiffany and his designers were at the height of their creative, with access to a vast trove of custom-made glass.



The grapevine motif appears in some of the earliest Tiffany windows, including three significant designs by Tiffany himself: The Antependium Window, adapted from an altar cloth exhibited in the Tiffany Chapel at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in addition to the Autumn Panel from the Four Seasons Window and a monumental three-panel screen titled Grapes and Autumn Fruits, both exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, prominently feature clusters of grapes and coiling vines. The fruits in these early and experimental Tiffany windows are three-dimensional, formed by individual pieces of rounded pressed glass of varied colors, often plated with multiple layers of glass on the reverse. Tiffany’s choice to prominently feature these particular windows at influential World’s Fairs underscores the importance of these innovations in leaded glass both artistically and economically; the positive reception of his exhibits led to an influx of commissions. 



Grapevines were incorporated into designs for Tiffany Windows in public and private settings. In Memorial Windows, an 1896 promotional booklet, a reproduction of a design by Agnes F. Northrop depicts an asymmetrical grapevine framing a distant sunset. Of the 15 windows pictured to advertise Tiffany Glass & Decorating Co.’s Ecclesiastical Department, the Northrop window is the only example without obvious religious references; instead of including a saint or angel, Northrop relied on organic symbolism. The composition bears a number of similarities to the window offered here. 



Coiling grapevines were also utilized in designs for residential clients, many of whom numbered among the most wealthy and influential figures in turn of the 20th century America. Samuel Bing, the prominent Art Nouveau dealer, declared in the 1896 that “there is scarcely a respectable house today whose entrance does not boast a stained glass overdoor.”  To suit the grand scales of the interiors of these clients Tiffany Studios designed windows which cleverly utilized the surrounding architecture, bringing a verdant garden or conservatory into an interior space.  Some of the most successful of these designs utilized the structural device of a trellis or arbor laden with an asymmetrical vine.