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About the Exhibition

Louis C. Tiffany (1848-1933) was regarded as the artistic genius behind the creative endeavors of Tiffany Studios, and it has often been presumed that the firm’s lamps, windows and luxury objects were designed exclusively by him. While Tiffany was undeniably the company’s guiding force, this exhibition reveals the substantial contributions of the women who labored anonymously, behind the scenes, to create the masterpieces now inextricably linked to the Tiffany name.

These unsung artists have been rescued from obscurity with the discovery in 2005 of caches of correspondence written by Clara Driscoll (1861-1944), Head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department at Tiffany Studios. Hundreds of letters, preserved at both the Queens Historical Society in New York City and the Kent State University Library in Ohio, identify Driscoll as the designer of many of the firm’s iconic lampshades and numerous other objects. Driscoll’s letters also bring to light the instrumental role of the “Tiffany Girls”—the young women who worked under her supervision selecting and cutting glass for windows, mosaics, and lampshades. Her correspondence provides a rare, first-person account of the day-to-day activities at Tiffany Studios.

Clara Wolcott Driscoll was in many ways typical of the many young women who flocked to New York City in the late 1800s seeking respectable careers, particularly in the burgeoning field of industrial art.

Her experiences as an independent career woman in turn-of-the-century New York City offer telling insights into the life of the middle class. As one of the New York City women pursuing respectable careers in artistic professions, she exemplified a new urban type that remodeled the paradigm of Victorian womanhood. This “New Woman” was marked by independence, earning power, participation in urban culture and an ability to establish a meaningful life outside the traditional family home.

Born in Tallmadge, Ohio, she graduated from Cleveland’s Western Reserve School of Design for Women in 1882 and attended the Metropolitan Museum Art School in New York City. She was hired by Tiffany around 1888 and soon proved herself an effective designer, but she left the firm in 1889 when she married Francis S. Driscoll , as convention demanded that married women should not be professionally employed. Following his untimely death in 1892, she returned to head the newly formed Women’s Glass Cutting Department, which eventually employed some thirty-five women.

Besides managing a large staff, Driscoll created designs for a wide range of objects and, in fact, designed most of the firm’s lampshades and mosaic bases. Her Dragonfly lamp won a prize at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 and in 1904 she was featured in an article on well-paid women published in the New York Daily News. But apart from these rare instances of public recognition Clara Driscoll remained unknown.

Clara Driscoll and Louis C. Tiffany’s productive collaboration was fueled by a shared artistic vision, including a love of nature and an appreciation of beautiful materials. Glass was the material that fascinated Tiffany most, and Driscoll’s designs took full advantage of the innovations in color, texture, and especially iridescence pioneered by Tiffany’s glassmakers. Although generally working independently, Driscoll flourished under Tiffany’s direction and regularly discussed her ideas with him.

Clara Driscoll’s experience in creating Tiffany’s leaded-glass windows and mosaics formed a natural prelude to her designing lamps with leaded-glass shades and mosaic clad bases. Her initial forays into lamp design commenced about 1898. Leaded glass had occasionally been employed in some of Tiffany’s earliest lighting designs, but the major emphasis in the 1890s had been on fuel lamps with blown glass shades. Suddenly, in 1898, the firm took a new direction and focused instead on lamps with leaded-glass shades. Whether or not this was Driscoll’s idea, she and her department nonetheless became responsible for designing and executing all the leaded-glass shades with nature-inspired themes. She conceived many of the most iconic Tiffany lamps, such as the Dragonfly and Wisteria. Her correspondence reveals that it was she who also had the specific idea of using glass mosaic to ornament the bronze bases.

Leaded-glass windows were among Tiffany’s most significant creations and were made for both ecclesiastical and domestic settings. Their design and execution involved several distinct stages of work and close artistic collaboration. Women usually drew the full-scale cartoons and selected and cut the glass, but men took charge of the leading and final assembly. Above all else, it was Tiffany’s fascination with richly hued color and interesting textures that resulted in the great success of these windows.

Glass mosaics formed another important aspect of Tiffany’s business, and here, too, the Women’s Glass Cutting Department played a key role in their execution. The company promoted these monumental and costly murals as being “practically indestructible, limitless in color and texture”.

The desk accessories, candlesticks, jardinières, and similarly useful objects that Tiffany Studios produced were marketed under the general term of “fancy goods”. As Clara Driscoll’s correspondence reveals, she was constantly coming up with new ideas. These small but highly desirable objets de vertu helped keep the Women’s Glass Cutting Department occupied in times when the pace of new commissions for windows and major mosaics slowed.

Tiffany expanded his enterprise to include enameling just before 1900, and he turned to pottery a few years later. Although these new items still bore his name, it was his female employees who realized their designs. Alice Gouvy and Lillian Palmié, good friends and associates of Clara Driscoll, created the designs for the first enameled vases and jars, and then for the pottery. This close knit relationship helps explain the conformity of Tiffany Studios’ many products, despite the diversity of hands and media.

Clara Driscoll left Tiffany Studios prior to marrying Edward Booth in September 1909 and effectively brought her career as a significant commercial artist to an end. Although she later turned her creative energy to painting silk scarves, she never again attained the level of success reached during her glory days at Tiffany Studios. At a time when all women’s careers in the commercial world were beset by formidable obstacles, Driscoll’s achievements were remarkable.

Perhaps coincidentally, the activities of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department, as well as Tiffany Studios’ lamp business in general, appear to have declined substantially following Clara Driscoll’s departure. A ledger documenting the work of the department in 1909 and 1910 records a drastically reduced workforce of only five women and a very restricted number of lamp shades in production.