This year, my sixth grade students participated in an Art Nouveau unit where they learned about Louis Comfort Tiffany. We designed lamps and painted stained glass windows.
With a recent home renovation, I had some custom glass put into my cabinets and the owner of the glass shop was excited to hear that I knew about Louis Comfort Tiffany and was planning to teach it to my students. I loved giving the students a behind the scenes look at what a glass-artist's shop looks like. This man has owned this shop since the 70's in downtown Denver and produces beautiful pieces.
To start our unit we learned about the characteristics of Art Nouveau and the life story of the artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. The sixth graders were very engaged in the conversation and after asking them their favorite project this year, a lot of them said the lamps! Along with Art Nouveau and Louis Comfort Tiffany, we talked about products and how they are marketed and made in a way to target certain consumers. We discussed things like functional v. non-functional art, color, design, and cost.
Here are some video links that you might find interesting to share with your students!
Artist: Louis Comfort Tiffany- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6xiSVca6I8
How It's Made: Stained Glass Windows- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WInb5RgsahI
My Favorite: Agnes Preece and Artist in Irelandshows the technique Louis Comfort Tiffany used- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WInb5RgsahI
I wanted to kick off this project with a drawing prompt which was "Design a Tiffany style lamp for Mother Nature." I wasn't sure how they were going to respond to the prompt but they loved it! They designed a lamp for mother nature in the hopes that she would buy their lamp.
Here they are!
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After they completed their lamps, they designed a stained glass window to match. With their stained glass windows they needed to have a few things.
#1) An edge for "copper foiling"
#2) A hue with it's tint and shade (This was really more of an experimentation. Some kids did amazing with this!)
#3) An enlarged representation of their lamp
We used acrylic paint on black construction paper.
I stressed that the students needed to DRAW BIG and enlarge their design. The students that didn't listen to that piece of advice regretted it later because it took a long time to paint.
However, these turned out great as well!
Mahalo for reading!
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