Louis Comfort Tiffany was heir and son to Charles Tiffany, who founded New York City’s Tiffany and Company. Fascinated with the distinctive light and color of exotic Middle Eastern glass he saw while studying in Europe early in life, Louis began experimenting with the medium in the late 1870s; in 1875 he founded Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated Artists, a respected interior design firm in its day. Associated Artists became Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company in 1892, which predates the establishment of Tiffany Studios in 1900. Tiffany’s experiments developed his famous patented, iridescent Favrile glass in the 1890s (seen here), designed to resemble the exotic glass he so admired.