Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls
My husband and I were in NY in 2006 and had just left the Natural History Museum when I saw a small door that was labeled as Historical Society Museum and Library. We went in and to my utter amazement we landed on a gold mine. Here in front of me was a recent discovery of the journals of Clara Driscoll where she talked about how she had designed some of Tiffany’s best-known lamps during her lunch hours and breaks. The most exquisite Tiffany lamps imaginable dimly lighted the small gallery. These jeweled lamps were side by side with the working drawings by Clara Driscoll. I knew down the road this would have to be a painting.
Walking through the gallery was like being on an archeological find of Tiffany Co. It was thought that Louis Comfort Tiffany himself designed the best of the lamps but here was evidence that it was a woman. It was Clara Driscoll along with the Tiffany girls who designed and produced many of the lamps attributed to Louis Comfort Tiffany including the famous Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony and from all accounts, Clara Driscoll’s first, the Daffodil.
In the accompanying book that I purchased from the gallery I found out that women generally were hired to choose the glass and colors for largely geometrically designed lamps. Clara Driscoll however soon showed her talents as she went from choosing glass to directing, designing and crafting more than thirty of the most recognized lamps produced by Tiffany yet until recently little was known about her.
Clara had lost her father at the age of 12 but was still able to attend school, a rare opportunity for a woman at the time. Clara attended the Metropolitan Museum Art School where she excelled as an artist and was hired by Tiffany right out of art school. She was such a valued employee by Tiffany that she earned a record $10,000 a year. Another point of note in her story is that Clara’s career could have been much more prolific but when she married she was no longer allowed to work as was the norm for society at the time.
The New York Times, on February 25, 2007 reported:
“As the exhibition was being installed, some of these little metal silhouettes used to make a gorgeous daffodil lamp shade were still jumbled in a box on a storage table. Meaningless on their own, when put in order they bring to life an exquisite object, just as the show itself, a puzzle now assembled, illuminates the talented women who had long stood in the shadow of a celebrated man.”