Clara Driscoll (Tiffany glass designer)

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Clara Driscoll in a workroom with Joseph Briggs, a longtime manager at Tiffany Studios (1901). Clara Driscoll (Tiffany glass designer) 1901.jpg
Clara Driscoll in a workroom with Joseph Briggs, a longtime manager at Tiffany Studios (1901).

Clara Driscoll (December 15, 1861 – November 6, 1944) of Tallmadge, Ohio, was head of the Tiffany Studios Women's Glass Cutting Department (the "Tiffany Girls"), in New York City. Using patterns created from the original designs, these women selected and cut the glass to be used in the famous lamps. Driscoll designed more than thirty Tiffany lamps produced by Tiffany Studios, among them the Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony, and from all accounts her first — the Daffodil. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Tallmadge, Ohio City in Ohio, United States

Tallmadge is a city in Summit and Portage counties in Ohio, United States. It is a suburb of Akron and part of the Akron Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 17,537 at the 2010 census. Tallmadge was founded in 1807 and is the second-oldest city in Summit County, following Hudson, which was founded in 1799.

Tiffany glass

Tiffany glass refers to the many and varied types of glass developed and produced from 1878 to 1933 at the Tiffany Studios in New York, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a team of other designers, including Frederick Wilson and Clara Driscoll.

Glass amorphous solid that exhibits a glass transition when heated towards the liquid state

Glass is a non-crystalline, amorphous solid that is often transparent and has widespread practical, technological, and decorative uses in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optoelectronics. The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of manufactured glass are "silicate glasses" based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand. The term glass, in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, which is familiar from use as window glass and in glass bottles. Of the many silica-based glasses that exist, ordinary glazing and container glass is formed from a specific type called soda-lime glass, composed of approximately 75% silicon dioxide (SiO2), sodium oxide (Na2O) from sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), calcium oxide (CaO), also called lime, and several minor additives.

Contents

Biography

Clara Driscoll was born Clara Pierce Wolcott on December 15, 1861, the eldest daughter of Elizur V. Wolcott and Fannie Pierce. She lost her father at the age of 12. Unusual for that time, she, along with her equally bright and motivated three younger sisters, was encouraged to pursue a higher education. Clara showed a flair for art, and after attending the Western Reserve School of Design for Women (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) and working for a local furniture maker, she moved to New York and enrolled at the then new Metropolitan Museum Art School. [6]

Cleveland Institute of Art Art school in Cleveland

The Cleveland Institute of Art, previously Cleveland School of Art, is a private college focused on art and design and located in Cleveland, Ohio.

Driscoll's artistic potential was apparent and she was hired by Louis Comfort Tiffany to work at Tiffany Glass Company (later known as Tiffany Studios) in 1888. [7] She worked there off and on for more than 20 years, designing lamps and fancy goods as well as supervising the Women's Glass Cutting Department [7] . Engaged or married women were not allowed to work at the company, so Driscoll had to leave because of her marriage in 1889. After Driscoll's first husband Francis Driscoll died in 1892, she resumed working for Tiffany. She became engaged again in 1896-1897, to Edwin Waldo, but he disappeared and no marriage occurred. She remained at Tiffany Studios until her marriage to Edward A. Booth in 1909. [6] While employed with Tiffany, Driscoll worked closely with a number of other "Tiffany Girls" including Alice Carmen Gouvy and Lillian Palmié. [6]

Alice Carmen Gouvy American artist

Alice Carmen Gouvy was a designer at Tiffany Studios and worked closely with Clara Driscoll, the head of the Women's Glass Cutting Department.

Letters and works

Through the combined efforts of Martin Eidelberg (professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University), Nina Gray (another independent scholar and former curator at the New-York Historical Society), and Margaret K. Hofer (curator of decorative arts, New-York Historical Society), the involvement of Clara Driscoll and other "Tiffany Girls" in designing Tiffany lamps was widely publicized. [8] [9] However, a book published in 2002 entitled Tiffany Desk Treasures, by George A. Kemeny and Donald Miller, had already named Clara Driscoll as the designer of Tiffany's signature Dragonfly lampshade, as well as a significant contributor to Tiffany Glass—four years before Eidelberg and Gray went public with their discovery in 2006. The book also cited Driscoll as being one of the highest-paid women of her time, earning $10,000 per year.

Martin P. Eidelberg is an American professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University and an expert on ceramics and Tiffany glass. He is noted for discovering that many floral Tiffany lamp designs were not personally made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, but by an underpaid and unrecognized woman designer named Clara Driscoll.

Rutgers University multi-campus American public research university in New Jersey, United States

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, commonly referred to as Rutgers University, Rutgers, or RU, is a public research university in New Jersey. It is the largest institution of higher education in New Jersey.

New-York Historical Society American history museum and library located in New York City

The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library located in New York City at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum. It presents exhibitions, public programs, and research that explore the rich history of New York and the nation.

Dragonfly Lamp, ca. 1900 Brooklyn Museum Clara Driscoll, Dragonfly Lamp, ca. 1900.jpg
Dragonfly Lamp, ca. 1900 Brooklyn Museum
A Tiffany Studios Daffodil leaded glass table lamp (shade shown), designed by Clara Driscoll. Wiki-Tiffany-daffodil-low-.jpg
A Tiffany Studios Daffodil leaded glass table lamp (shade shown), designed by Clara Driscoll.

While doing research for a book on Tiffany at the Queens Historical Society, Gray found the historically valuable letters written by Driscoll to her mother and sisters during the time she was employed at Tiffany. [2] [3] The New York Times quoted Gray as saying: "They brought out two books and several boxes, all letters, and I think the first thing I read was about how she had designed a daffodil lamp. And I started squealing. At the top it said something like ‘Noon at Tiffany’s,’ so it was during her lunch hour. What do you do with something like that?” Martin Eidelberg had independently seen the correspondence when he was approached by a descendent of Clara Driscoll after a lecture. The two historians compared notes after they crossed paths at Kent State University, where they were both tracking down more of Driscoll's correspondence. Their conclusion was beyond doubt. It was Clara Driscoll and the "Tiffany Girls" who had created many of the Tiffany lamps originally attributed to Louis Comfort Tiffany and his staff of male designers.

Queens Historical Society organization

The Queens Historical Society, which was founded in 1968 after a merger with the Kingsland Preservation Commission, is dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of Queens, New York and interpreting the history of the borough as it relates to various historical periods. The historical society is the only museum about Queens' history within the borough and is located in Kingsland Homestead, which is a historic house museum within Weeping Beech Park.

<i>The New York Times</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper based in New York City

The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 125 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U.S.

Louis Comfort Tiffany American stained glass and jewelry designer

Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. He was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels, and metalwork. He was the first Design Director at his family company, Tiffany & Co., founded by his father Charles Lewis Tiffany.

The New-York Historical Society's exhibit "A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls" (November 27, 2006) showcasing the work of Driscoll (and her "girls") was the result of the investigative efforts of Eidelberg, Gray and Hofer. 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."

The book A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls (by Eidelberg, Gray and Hofer) was published in 2007. It "presents celebrated works of Tiffany Studios in an entirely new context, focusing on the women who labored behind the scenes to create the masterpieces now inextricably linked to the Tiffany name." [10]


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Clara Driscoll may refer to:

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References

  1. ↑ Kate Taylor (February 13, 2007). "Tiffany's Secret Is Over" . Retrieved 2009-11-16.
  2. 1 2 Caitlin A. Johnson (April 15, 2007). "Tiffany Glass Never Goes Out Of Style". CBS News.com. Retrieved 2009-11-16.
  3. 1 2 Jeffrey Kastner (February 25, 2007). "Out of Tiffany's Shadow, a Woman of Light". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-11-16.
  4. ↑ Vivian Goodman (January 14, 2007). "Exhibition Honors Woman Behind the Tiffany Lamp". National Public Radio (NPR). Retrieved 2009-11-16.
  5. ↑ Staff writer (April 7, 2006). "Spare Times". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-11-16.
  6. 1 2 3 Bassett, Mark (January 1, 2012). "Breaking Tiffany's Glass Ceiling: Clara Wolcott Driscoll (1861-1944)". Cleveland Institute of Art News. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  7. 1 2 "Tiffany Studios designers, Morse Museum, Winter Park, Florida". www.morsemuseum.org. Retrieved 2018-01-10.
  8. ↑ Eidelberg, Martin; Gray, Nina; Hofer, Margaret (2007). A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls. London: New York Historical Society, in association with D. Giles Ltd.
  9. ↑ "A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls". New York Historical Society Museum & Library. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  10. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1904832350

See also

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