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Disassociating the "Associated Artists": The Early Business Ventures of Louis C. Tiffany, Candace T. Wheeler, and Lockwood de Forest

Since the 1960s, many scholars have discussed the career of Louis Comfort Tiffany (18484933) and his earliest endeavor to establish an interior decorating business, the so-called "Associated Artists." The history of this venture was first presented by Robert Koch, who wrote his doctoral dissertation atYale University on Tiffany in 1957 and published Louis C. Tiffany: Rebel in Glass in 1964. Koch claimed that there was a partnership among Tiffany, Candace Thurber Wheeler (1827-1923), Lockwood de Forest (18504932), and Samuel Colman (18324920), stating that it began in 1879 and ended four years later, in 1883.1 He identified the firm as "Louis C. Tiffany and Associated Artists." To document their various commissions, Koch relied on Artistic Houses, a subscription series, published during the course of 1883-1884, that presented photographs of the lavish interiors of America's nouveaux riches. He also drew on the writings of Candace Wheeler, particularly her autobiography, Yesterdays in a Busy Life (1918), which included an entire chapter entitled "The Associated Artists." Wheeler implied that the firm was founded by consensus, with Tiffany, Wheeler, de Forest, and Colman on equal footing, though they had different skills and interests. Wheeler also stated that Tiffany was responsible for the overall design of the glass and its use in interiors, while she managed the design and production of textiles and embroideries. De Forest searched out carved woodwork from India, and Colman specialized in color and the design of ornamental patterns for textiles. Acknowledging her debt to Koch, Madeleine B. Stern reiterated this history in her 1963 book, We the Women: Career Firsts of NineteenthCentury America, although she referred to the partnership as "Tiffany's Associated Artists" and suggested that it was Wheeler's desire for independence that prompted the group's dissolution in 1883.2 Writing in 1975, Wilson H. Faude, then curator of the Mark Twain Memorial (now known as the Mark Twain House) in Hartford, Connecticut, also