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Glossary · Architecture

Art-glass windows

The pastel, sharply beveled windows of the Winchester house, long called Tiffany but most likely made by John Mallon’s San Francisco firm.

For decades tour guides said the house’s windows were Tiffany. In 2019 historian Jim Wolf traced matching windows at Craigdarroch Castle in British Columbia to John Mallon of the Pacific American Decorative Company in San Francisco. The next morning, restorers found an envelope from Mallon’s firm, postmarked July 1894, inside a dining-room wall, with a note believed to be in Sarah Winchester’s hand. Many windows she bought were never installed and are kept in a storage room.

Sources

Questions people ask

Are the Winchester house windows Tiffany?

Probably not. The evidence points to John Mallon’s Pacific American Decorative Company.

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