Many Tiffany specialties were developed from ancient forms and styles. For example, the technique for creating millefiori had been used 2000 years ago, but not by Tiffany's methods or with his luster finish. The closely packed "thousand flowers " of millefiori, most familiar in French paperweights, were formed by fusing tiny rods of colored glass. Tiffany did not place segments of these rods in close proximity as in paperweights. Rather, in the celebrated Tiffany floral vases, a patch of opalescent glass and the whole was reheated, allowing the well-separated flowers to be molded into the body before the piece received its iridescent finish. Some items decorated in this manner were cased with a layer of clear glass, sometimes called Tiffany paperweight glass. Aquamarine glass, made in much the same way, was embedded with marine decoration and wavy green sea vegetation occasionally with fish or pebbles. In these works, the heavy green glass was intended to simulate the sea, and those with fish and sea life are the most rare. These vases produced c 1905-1915 were made according to paperweight making techniques, but what would be a flaw in a paperweight, i.e. bubbles of air, adds to the naturalistic effect as bubbles rising to the surface of the water. In 2002, a Tiffany Favrile aquamarine Goldfish vase, one of only 2 known to exist, sold for $532,000 setting a new record for Tiffany glass.

Lamps of Tiffany