single "sawtooth" prismatic glass luxfer patent tile

a single luxfer patent "sawtooth" tile with embossed lettering...

photograph by eric j. nordstrom

prismatic glass, which was a highly successful building material in the united states between the turn of the century and the 1920's, promised to refract daylight from the facades deep into a building and thus would help to save energy, create healthier working environments, and contribute to the development of a new modern architecture. the luxfer prism companies were the inventors and most prominent producers of this material. luxfer contributed to the contemporary architectural debate by promoting the small-scale pattern of its glass installations as a competing vision of architectural modernity to that of the emerging aesthetic of steel and glass facades. in the early 1930's prismatic glass finally lost the competition with electrical lighting and new structural day lighting devices such as hollow glass blocks.