Stained Glass Artist & Entrepreneur Mary Tillinghast

Gilded Age Stained Glass Artist and Entrepreneur Mary Tillinghast

Finds Home at Gelman Museum

By Dr. Kimberly Selber Photography by Jose Tello

Mary Elizabeth Tillinghast (1845-1912) wore many hats: painter, architect, muralist, embroiderer, mosaic and stained-glass artist, and entrepreneur. Born to New York’s upper-class society in 1845, she has been described as “deeply talented,” “willful,” and “whip-smart.” Being an independent female artist, a rarity in the 19th Century, she understood that she had to work tirelessly and be different than her male counterparts. In stained glass, this primarily meant John La Farge and Louis C. Tiffany.

Tillinghast worked briefly for Tiffany before joining La Farge’s design firm in 1881. Here she not only honed her craft but also became masterful at managing the business. By 1884 Tillinghast established her own shop providing interior design services and work in glass. Novel in her approach to stained glass, she was the first to realize the difference that the electric lighting of churches would make in the spectacular effect of window designs.

As an independent entrepreneur, Tillinghast attracted clients such as the philanthropist Margaret Olivia Sage, Alexander Graham Bell, and tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard. In 1893, she was a medal recipient of The World’s Columbian Exposition, and an 1896 article described her as “the most versatile artist we can boast among women in this country.”

Tillinghast was masterful at cultivating the press, inviting its members to literary and musical salons at her opulent New York duplex at 3 Washington Square North, where she also had a well-known and famously unheated studio. At her death in 1912, the artist Edward Hopper took over the studio until 1967. It is now part of the New York University Campus.

The story of Mary Tillinghast resonates with the narrative of progress for women in America. Her indomitable grit and willpower characterize the Gilded Age. Her works echo the American Renaissance as her massive windows were installed not only in the newly built mansions on the East Coast but in religious institutions quintessential to our country’s founding.

Not only does her spirit live in New York, but she is alive, symbolically speaking, in the most unusual place: San Juan, Texas. Tillinghast’s story, and that of her patron, Margaret Sage, have been re-envisioned at the Gelman Stained Glass Museum. Here two of her windows commissioned by Sage in 1906 have been permanently reinstalled for the world to enjoy again. Soaring over 30 feet tall by 15 feet wide, these masterpieces were originally installed at the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, New York.

To recreate the buzz and excitement of a memorial window dedication in the 1900s, the Gelman Museum hosted a public installation. “And All That Glass,” honoring Tillinghast’s legacy, invited the public to step into the Gilded Age and to experience a behind-the-scenes installation as one would have done 100 years ago.

“The most frequent question asked by visitors to the museum,” said Miriam Cepeda, Executive Director of the Gelman Museum, “is, How did all these windows become part of the collection?” The short answer: Time. Nothing can escape time. Time tends to erase memories and demolish longstanding cornerstones in our community, such as the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, New York, where Tillinghast’s “New Jerusalem” windows were originally installed.

But, like the church, Tillinghast’s extraordinary accomplishments have also been lost to time; her archives vanished after her death in 1912. The erosion of Tillinghast’s memory has been restored by installing the New Jerusalem windows, which have virtually traveled across time (over 100 years) and across the country to their final destination.

The Gelman Stained Glass Museum is a setting as magnificent as the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, New York. A museum that will memorialize Tillinghast’s indomitable spirit, leaving lessons for young women everywhere, “what one little woman can do when she makes up her mind to it.”

Please scan the QR code to read more about Mary Tillinghast, First Presbyterian Church, and the museum’s collection. To visit the museum, tickets can be purchased online at www.gelmanmuseum.org.

Photographer: Byron Company Mary Tillinghast in her studio, circa 1897

Photographer: Byron Company Mary Tillinghast at her easel, circa 1897