Mary Elizabeth Tillinghast

Mary Elizabeth Tillinghast (1845 - December 15, 1912)^[1] was an American artist. Best known for stained glass, her professional career encompassed roles as architect, muralist, mosaic artist, textile artist, inventor, writer, and studio boss.

Tillinghast trained in Paris, then embarked on a commercial career in the decorative arts studios of 1880s New York City. Her early career was marked with successes despite a chaotic business relationship with John La Farge that ended in years of public litigation. Once independent, from the mid-1880s until her death in 1912, Tillinghast continued to produce major stained glass commissions while also running a stable, successful decorative arts business, working from a well-known studio in Greenwich Village.

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Tillinghast was born in New York in 1845, the daughter of the wealthy merchant and land speculator Philip Tillinghast (1808-1879) and his wife Julia Anne Cozzens Titus. The family moved from Manhattan to Clinton Hill, Newark in the 1850s, where a street bears the family name. She was taught privately, and traveled with her father to Europe. From 1872 to 1878 she studied painting in Paris, under Carolus-Duran and others.

Her father Philip was ruined in the financial panic of 1873, and died in 1879. While the family retained some means and its social connections, Mary made a vocation for herself out of her art training. Within a few years, from 1878 to 1884, she got direct experience in the flourishing decorative arts studios of the time, in both the Tiffany camp and La Farge camp.

Jacob's Dream, , New York City, 1887

Grace Episcopal Church

stained glass windows at the Elizabeth Seton Building, chapel, Greenwich Village, NYC, for architects Schickel & Ditmars, 1889; re-located to St. Peters hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. circa 2012^[9]

St. Vincent's Hospital

three stained glass windows on resurrection theme, (at Symphony Circle), Buffalo, New York, circa 1890

First Presbyterian Church

multiple great windows and furnishings, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, , circa 1890^[10]

Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Window, Oxford Female Seminary (now Miami University), Oxford, Ohio, 1892 (re-installed after 1980 in the Kumler Chapel)

Calvin S. Brice

an entire tomb with integrated stained glass and mosaic work, the Mausoleum, Pittsfield Cemetery, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1894^[11]

Gordon McKay

mural decorations in the cafe, "unconventional and novel to a remarkable degree", in the original , NYC, 1895 (razed)^[12]

Hotel Savoy

stained-glass image of for the Allegheny Observatory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,^[13] installed July 1903

Urania

St. Paul Preaching stained glass, First Presbyterian Church, Yonkers, New York, circa 1906

[14]

multiple stained glass windows, along with crafted furnishings (baptismal font and reredos) credited to "Tillinghast Studio", for First Presbyterian Church, 620 West Genesee Street, Syracuse, New York, circa 1906-07^[16]

[15]

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for the , 1908^[13]

New-York Historical Society

stained glass windows, South Reformed Church (present-day ), NYC, for architects Cram, Goodhue, & Ferguson, circa 1909^[17]

Park Avenue Christian Church

Trinity Episcopal Church, , for architect Bertram Goodhue, 1912 (her final commission)

Asheville, North Carolina

a portrait in stained glass of Mrs. James Brown Potter (as )

Charlotte Corday

the Gould Window, for , for the Home for Friendless Children, NYC

Mrs. Russell Sage

"memorial windows at churches in Terre Haute (M.E.) and Washington D.C. (Luth.) and large windows 'Faith, Hope and Charity' at ."^[18]

Attleboro, Massachusetts

The work of Tillinghast includes: