Louis Comfort Tiffany was born on February 18, 1848. He was the eldest son of Charles Tiffany, who was the founder of Tiffany and Company, the finest jewelry and silver company in the country. It was assumed by his father that Louis would eventually succeed him in the family business. To the surprise of his parents after graduating from college in 1866, where he concentrated on art, LCT announced that he intended to paint. In late 1868 LCT went to Paris to continue his art studies. He shortly traveled to North Africa to tour because he was intrigued by Moorish Art. This trip had a profound influence on his artistic development and many of his later works. He returned to New York in 1871, where he joined the American Water Color Society. He organized the Society of American Artists together with John LaFarge, and several others. He was a prolific painter between 1870 and 1879 and focused on scenes of New York City, France and Northern Africa.

While he continued to paint throughout his life, he was dissatisfied with his development and focused on the burgeoning arts and crafts movement. Tiffany with Lockwood de Forest, Samuel Coleman, and Candace Wheeler (the founder of the New York Society for The Decorative Arts) established the company of Louis C. Tiffany and Associated Artists. The firm would specialize in interior decorating and became immediately successful. The firm's commissions include the Seventh Regiment Armory, the Union League Club, the White House, and the homes of Mark Twain, H.O. Havemeyer, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

One of the major features of the Associated Artists was Tiffanys use of glass tiles and windows. He had been experimenting with glass as early as 1875 and in 1878 established his own glasshouse with a Venetian expert as its supervisor. At this point Tiffany decided to devide his interior decorating firm into two independent branches: Associated Artists would produce all of the textiles and the Louis C. Tiffany and company would produce all of the stained glass windows.

Inspired by ancient glass which acquired a very attractive iridescence on it surface after being buried for many centuries he developed a method of artificially iridizing glass with the used of various acid fumes and heavy metals, which led to the creation of Favrile glass. His Favrile glass was able to be produce in any color and any luster that might be required. This new glass enable Tiffany to avoid the application of paint , stains or enamels which had traditionally been used with stained glass. An additional innovation was the manner in which the windows were leaded to outline the components of the subject at hand. Additionally the use of multiple layers of glass that were "plated" together was introduced which allowed further artistic variations in colors, textures, and densities.

One of the most important stained glass commissions was in 1885 for Sameuel Bing's Salon de l'Art Nouveau in Paris. In addition to producing stained glass windows, Tiffany began producing glass mosaics inspired by the use of glass in Byzantine mosaics. The first mosaic was procured in 1879. The Tiffany Glass Company was established in Corona, Queens to produce glass items in 1885. In 1892 the name was changed to the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company and in 1902 the company was divided into Tiffany Studios, which would procured furniture, draperied, rugs, lighting fixtures, stained glass windows, mosaics, bronze desk sets, sculpture, jewelry, pottery, wrought ironwork, enamel pieces, and garden marble, and Tiffany Furnaces, which made the Favrile glass and glassware.

Tiffany's involvement in the glass production was primarily the design of the pieces and approval of all of the designs created by his employees. He encouraged experimentation and wanted each piece of glass to be a one of a kind piece. Museums throughout the world obtained examples of the glass and it received many awards from the Chicago's Columbian Exposition, the St. Louis Exposition, and the Panama-Pacific Exposition.