"Not built by hands, made by memory and devotion": Tiffany's Confederate memorial windows
Embargo Date
2027-09-11
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
This dissertation examines the Confederate memorial stained-glass windows crafted by the various iterations of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s design companies in the years between 1890 and 1925. In so doing, this project explores Tiffany’s engagement with the visual program and mythos of the Lost Cause amid the period of racial violence and oppression known as the Jim Crow era. Tiffany’s work is commonly associated with the prosperity and luxury of the Gilded Age. By considering the Confederate memorial windows in the context of this era, my project more fully considers the windows’ social and cultural impact. This contextualization also complicates our understanding of Tiffany’s oeuvre and the nature of Lost Cause memorialization. Arguing that Tiffany and his white Southern patrons shared a commitment to memory, this project identifies similarities between Tiffany’s brand of memory-making and Lost Cause memorialization practices. Tiffany’s nineteen known Confederate memorial windows are distributed across five sites in three Southern states, from Virginia to Alabama and Mississippi. The first chapter analyzes the Soldiers’ Memorial Window at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi to highlight the shared impulses in memorialization between Tiffany and his Confederate patrons. The second chapter examines the Davis Memorial Window of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia to understand the appeal of Tiffany’s firm to Confederate memorial organizations. The third chapter focuses on the Spirit of the Confederacy Window of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia to explore the utility of stained glass as a medium for Confederate memorialization. The fourth chapter uses the fifteen windows of Old Blandford Church in Petersburg, Virginia to understand the role of Tiffany’s religious designs in allowing Confederate memorial groups to negotiate sectional reconciliation on their own terms. The final chapter studies the Christian Soldier Window at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to reveal how Tiffany’s firm and his patrons employed the notion of a “usable past” to navigate contemporary political and cultural issues.
Description
2024