Tiffany & Co., The Adams Vase

This is probably the premier example of the Gilded Age, a time when America showed its stuff as a financial and industrial powerhouse: opulent, ambitious, successful, over-the-top. You know nothing is plain. It’s not something that would stop everyone, but I think in terms of its moment, I think it’s a star. It was presented to Edward Dean Adams-- who in the 1890s rescued the American cotton oil industry commissioned by the American Cotton Oil Company for Tiffany & Co. to have produced. They said the materials should come from the rivers and mountains of America, to be as American as the American cotton oil industry. And it really is a salute to commerce. The vase is meant to look like the cotton plant, with the little crystal blossoms on the handles and the crystal at the top is the cotton boll. The composition actually works--it’s kind of amazing, there’s so much going on. It’s like a piece of jewelry. Each little bit is a tiny, beautiful work of art. The enameling seamlessly flows from purple to lavender to green. The whole body is hand-hammered from the inside out, stretched almost to its limits to form basic figures: Atlas holding the globe, and Husbandry with his hand on the back of a beaver. Also, Modesty, and Genius, supported by Industry warming his hands over the fire. You get all sorts of historical references. I think Americans were just looking very broadly, maybe in a way to connect to world culture. We’ve come a long way from colonial American silver, which is so pure and plain. This does not show restraint. And it says something about precious metals: that they are what represent this kind of status and accomplishment.This is something you could’ve found in a Renaissance goldsmith shop, except it was made for a titan of industry, rather than a Medici prince. And I think the combination of ornament and opulence is what draws me in.