DRAGONFLIES OF GLASS

Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the famed jeweler and the man responsible for the iconic Tiffany stained glass windows, employed a crew of workers, including the “Tiffany Girls,” led by Clara Driscoll.

In 1888, Clara, an artist inspired by nature on her girlhood farm in Ohio, moved to New York City for school. Her sketches of flowers landed her a job with Mr. Tiffany. At first, Clara’s job was to choose and cut colored glass “gleaming like jewels” for Tiffany’s window designs. Her talents generated notice, and soon she led “the only shop of women glass cutters in the world.” Goldman Rubin describes how the windows were designed and assembled, and she provides some history of the cooperation and competition between men and women at Tiffany’s studio, including the perhaps surprising fact that they received equal pay. Eventually, Clara created her own designs for Tiffany’s lamps. One, inspired by dragonflies, earned her a bronze medal from the 1900 Paris World’s Fair. Clara designed lamps with butterflies, poppies, tulips, and flowering wisteria vines, which became “Tiffany’s most famous.” In Chapman’s resplendent accompanying illustration, shimmering with purples, yellows, and greens, Clara is dwarfed by the comparatively giant lamp—a fitting tribute to her outsize, little-known contribution to the art world. A secondary story based on Clara’s letter to her family about her work appears in Chapman’s joyously colored strip illustrations, along with excerpts from the correspondence.

A satisfying, behind-the-scenes look at the work of an unsung designer.