MAKING LIGHT BLOOM

The female artist behind Louis Comfort Tiffany’s iconic lamps went unacknowledged for years.

Until Clara Driscoll’s letters to her family were found, no one knew that she was responsible for these creations. After studying art and design, Clara moved from her Ohio farm to New York City and was hired by glassmaker Louis Comfort Tiffany to work on his stained glass windows. He liked her “flair for glass” and put her in charge of the “Tiffany Girls,” a workshop of women artists, to whom she sometimes read nature poetry. She began designing lamps inspired by butterflies, flowers, and eventually dragonflies, with their lacy wings illuminated by lamplight. Louis liked the dragonfly lamp so much that he sent it to the World’s Fair in Paris, where it won a bronze medal. Clara was meticulous in her study of nature, “even pinning flowers upside down to discover how they fell,” which led to her famous wisteria lamp, with its “two thousand petals cascading from branches.” Paschkis’ folk-style illustrations powerfully evoke the puzzlelike shapes of Tiffany windows, with vibrant colors set inside thick black lines. A helpful author’s note details Clara’s artistic process for each lamp, which included making five designs (beginning with a watercolor rendition), carving the design into a wooden mold, and then cutting the pieces into glass.

An evocative look at one woman’s gift for channeling her love of nature into art.