This Dazzling Tiffany Stained-Glass Window Adorned a Church for More Than a Century. Now It Needs a New Home

The Second Congregational Church of Winsted in Connecticut will auction off the colorful artwork featuring a stunning waterfall and sunset

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

April 22, 2026

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

For more than a century, a colorful stained-glass window dazzled worshippers at the Second Congregational Church of Winsted in northwest Connecticut. Now, the vibrant artwork is heading to auction, where, officials say, it could sell for as much as $2 million.

The double-lancet window, installed above the church’s balcony since 1899, is called The Boyd Family Memorial Window (The Falls). Created by Tiffany Studios, it will be sold during a Christie’s auction in New York in June to support the church’s mission and ministries.

Ellen Wright Boyd commissioned the window in honor of her parents, John and Emily Boyd. John Boyd was a historian, steel industrialist and Connecticut's secretary of state, per Artnet’s Richard Whiddington. Boyd also wrote an 1873 publication, titled Annals and Family Records of Winchester, that documented Winsted’s early settlers, according to a statement from Christie’s.

One side of the window features a waterfall flowing down brown rocks, while the other shows lilies, irises and other lush green plants. The background depicts an orange sunset fading into a moody blue sky behind a strip of purple mountains. A circular top section features a bejeweled gold crown. The words “John Boyd 1799-1881” and “Emily W. Boyd 1805-1842” appear beneath the panels.

The piece is “an exceptional example of the [Tiffany] Studio’s technical brilliance, emotional depth and command of color and light,” says Victoria Tudor, head of Christie’s design department, in the statement. “Windows featuring a waterfall prominently in the foreground are exceedingly rare within Tiffany’s oeuvre.”

The Boyd Family Memorial Window (The Falls) is one of three Tiffany Studios creations at the historic church. It’s also home to a mosaic honoring a longstanding deacon, as well as a stained-glass window called Christ With Child, which is probably based on the Bible verse “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” according to the church. The church itself was constructed in the 1890s for $60,000, under the direction of Reverend Newell M. Calhoun. Built from local granite and sandstone, it was designed by New York architect Arthur Bates Jennings in the French Gothic style.

Tiffany Studios was founded in the late 19th century by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, who founded jewelry firm Tiffany & Co. With financial support from his father, Louis Comfort Tiffany hired designers and craftspeople—many of them women—to produce blown-glass vases, leaded-glass windows and lamps, pottery, enamels, jewelry and other decorative objects.

Although his team used many of the same tools, ingredients and techniques that glass artists relied on for millennia, Louis Comfort Tiffany “took the science of glassmaking … and elevated it to an art form of new brilliance and beauty,” according to the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, home to what it says is the most comprehensive Tiffany Studios collection in the world.

Tiffany Studios specialized in opalescent or American glass, which was “radically different” from the standard glass in use at the time, per the museum. Even a single piece could be manipulated to feature different colors and textures, creating the illusion of natural and manmade forms, like water and fabric.

“Tiffany, in a sense, was painting with glass, as opposed to painting on glass,” according to the museum.

John La Farge, a painter and stained-glass designer who was considered Tiffany’s rival, first patented the process for creating opalescent glass, but Tiffany made updates to the technique and received patents for his version, which he called “Favrile” glass.

The company’s stained-glass artisans started by sketching out their designs. After leveling-up to a cartoon, they created two separate tracings—one used as a pattern, the other cut into templates for the individual glass pieces. Then they would select and cut the glass, and use either flexible lead strips or thin copper foil to solder the pieces together into one sturdy masterpiece.

Though Tiffany helped popularize stained glass in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the art form dates back centuries earlier. In the early 12th century, for instance, a German monk writing under the pseudonym “Theophilus” wrote a detailed account of how to make sheets of colored glass and use them to produce broader scenes. Stained-glass windows also featured prominently in European cathedrals, homes and civic buildings between 1150 and 1550, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Sarah Kuta | Read More

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.