Switzerland & Midwest Connections: J. A. Holzer — Tiffany’s Brilliant Swiss Artist
Welcome to the History Blog featuring the connections between Switzerland and the Midwest. I am Joerg Oberschmied, Deputy Consul General in Chicago. My interest in history started at an early age and continues to this day. The views expressed are solely mine and I hope you enjoy these journeys through time.
The glass painter Jakob Adolf Holzer, originally from Moosseedorf in the Canton Bern, headed the mosaic department of the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company for many years. After his association with Tiffany ended, Holzer remained a sought-after artist executing a wide variety of commissions as an independent stained-glass artist.
Association with Tiffany
Born in 1858, Holzer studied in Paris before leaving for the United States in 1879. He studied engraving at the National Academy of Design in New York and then worked with acclaimed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John LaFarge. In 1886 Holzer began his association with Louis Comfort Tiffany. Soon after he was appointed Head of the firm’s Mosaic Department.
Holzer designed the cross-shaped electrified lantern that became famous at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, one of two electrified lanterns that have been called the “ancestors” of all later Tiffany lamps. Measuring ten feet in height and weighing about a thousand pounds, with over two hundred lights, it was aesthetic rather than practical.
The Marquette Building Mosaics
In 1895 Holzer designed the mosaic panels at the Marquette Building, which was built in the hope that demand for office space would increase in the growing city. Holzer selected four scenes from the travels of French Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette and Quebec-born Louis Joliet through what was then known as New France. Marquette reached the Chicago River in 1674. He kept a journal of his travels and among the entries he describes a leek-like local onion the natives called, and he spelled, Chekogou. The journals were later translated by Owen Aldis, a lawyer originally from Vermont who came to Chicago in the aftermath of the great Fire. Holzer used these translations for his work on the panels. The panels show Marquette with local natives. In the spring of 1875, Marquette fell ill and died in Michigan. The panel carries the text “…to die as he had always asked, in a wretched cabin mid the forests, destitute of all human aid”. Each panel is detailed in opalescent glass. The splendid sparkle of the glass is likely due to St. Peters sandstone, also called ‘Ottawa sand’, according to Chicago art historian Rolf Achilles. It consists of small quartz grains that can be over 99% quartz. Glass made of this sand is particularly clear and sparkles instinctively.
The World’s Largest Tiffany Dome
Shortly after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, several thousand books were sent to Chicago from England (including many from Queen Victoria’s personal collection) to replace the public library that had presumably been consumed by flames. Chicago then did not have a public library, and the books moved around the city until a permanent home was built in 1897. Holzer designed the 38-foot in diameter Tiffany Dome in the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall. It is comprised of 30,000 individual pieces of Favrile glass, assembled in 243 sections held together in a cast iron frame. It is said to be the largest Tiffany dome in the world. The original dome dates to 1897, when the building opened as the Chicago Public Library. In 1935, the dome was enclosed from the outside with a copper and concrete roof, which eliminated the natural light. The 2008 restoration saw the removal of that roof, and the return of natural light, with supplemental artificial light that is used as needed. It also involved cleaning the glass, which had years of caked on dirt and grime, repairing somewhere around 1,700 cracked pieces of glass, and re-gilding the iron. At the center of the dome is a great glass rosette encircled by the signs of the zodiac in four sets of three.
Holzer returned to Europe in 1923 and in 1937, his collection of Renaissance art was donated to the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva. He passed away in Florence (Italy) in 1938.
The Chicago Cultural Center is located on Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Washington Streets. You can visit the Marquette Building and Holzer’s Mosaics at 40 S Dearborn Street in Chicago.
