A Tiffany stained-glass window from an Ohio Baptist Church has sold for a world record $12.5 million at a New York sale this week.
The Danner Memorial Window was installed in the First Baptist Church in Canton in 1913.
Annie McClymonds commissioned it from the legendary New York store and makers Tiffany where Tiffany Studios artist Agnes Northrop designed it.
The window honoured the late John and Theresa Danner, who had been founders of the church in 1849.
It’s quite a tribute: 16 feet by 10 feet and in vibrant colours showing a natural scene that is typical of Northrop’s work.
Designer Agnes Northrop is now recognised as the equal of painters like Picasso for her work in stained glass.
It was sold this week in New York. An opening bid of $4 million was asked, and Sotheby’s estimated the window would sell for between $5 million and $7 million.
In the end, it took more than 6 minutes of bidding to push the price up to $10.8 million, rising to $12.5 million with extras.
This is a world record for a Tiffany piece. And it’s the second time the Danner window has set the mark.
The original church was closed in 1989 and its contents – including the window – were sold separately for a total of just $900,000.
By 2001, the Danner Window was recognised as a masterpiece and was sold for $2 million at auction, setting the world record it has now smashed.
It was bought then by Alan Gerry, who founded the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
Sotheby’s said: “Agnes Northrop can be credited with the window’s design, but it was the cadre of her fellow ‘Tiffany Girls’ who was responsible for the arduous and critical task of selecting the pieces of glass that were required to bring the design to life from among thousands of available sheets.”
Northrop was one of America’s preeminent glass designers.
She was born in Queens in 1857. She joined Tiffany’s Glass Company in the 1880s, starting as a “Tiffany Girl” herself, before working her way up to a design job.
The Metropolitian Museum of Art in New York will show her Garden Landscape window this year, and her work is represented in museum collections across America.
This sale, which set a record for any Tiffany item, was the first time a Tiffany glass item had been sold in a fine art sale, putting Northrop alongside the likes of Picasso.
