New Tiffany Style

Tiffany-styled stained glass often contains intricately cut opaque or opalescent glass, overlaid with wide varieties in thickness. The glass is selected for its color and the use of the colored glass itself creates the stained glass pictures. This is contrasted with the method of painting in glass paint or enamels on colorless glass that had been the dominant method of creating stained glass for several hundred years in Europe.

In the beginning of Tiffany's career, he used cheap jelly jars and bottles because they had the mineral impurities that finer glass lacked. When he was unable to convince fine glassmakers to leave the impurities in, he began making his own glass using opalescent glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a unique new American style of stained glass.

The Conrad Schmitt Studios prides itself on its ability to create Tiffany-styled stained glass windows, drawing upon its vast experience and its glass palette from the Studios' special collection of Tiffany glass as well as that from various specialty suppliers. The style calls for matching century-old-glass and often joining the glass with copper foil rather than lead cames.

CSS also conserves countless windows by Tiffany and similar multi-layered and intricatly designed windows by John La Farge, Mayer of Munich, McCully and Miles and others.