The Morse Museum, 15th February 2017
The Morse Museum is an imposing edifice which stands on the main street in Winter Park. It was created by Jeannette McKean, granddaughter of a Chicago industrialist Charles Hosmer Morse.
In 1957 Jeannette's husband Hugh learnt that Laurleton Hall, the estate of Louis Tiffany the glass artist had burnt down. Tiffany had created Laurelton Hall on Long Island and it was used for the study of art as well as being Tiffany's residence. Hugh himself had been a student there. Tiffany followed the sentiment of the Arts and Crafts movement established by William Morris, but because of his personal fortune managed to make a commercial success of it.
Laurelton Hall was no ordinary mansion but had been designed by Tiffany as a work of art in itself. He designed the interior and the paintings he collected were also displayed there. After Tiffany's death in 1933 the family fortune reversed and most of the art and glass work was sold off before the fire in 1957, that gutted the building which by then had been sub-divided. Tiffany had made a chapel with rich mosaics and stained glass windows for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. and housed it in a purpose made building on his estate. This had been bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art but McKean managed to obtain it from them.
Hugh acquired a substantial collection of Tiffany's work and rehoused it in the museum in Winter Park. The museum was moved to it's present location in 1995 and there are reproductions of Tiffany's Daffodil Terrace and other rooms that were present in Laurelton Hall.
http://www.morsemuseum.org
http://www.morsemuseum.org
I photographed some details of the stained glass and show them here with pictures of the chapel and the Daffodil Terrace.
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