Clara Driscoll (Tiffany glass designer)

A Louis Comfort Tiffany & Co. Daffodil leaded glass table lamp (shade shown), designed by Tiffany's head designer, Clara Driscoll.

Clara Driscoll (1861–1944) of Tallmadge, Ohio was director of the Tiffany Studios' Women's Glass Cutting Department (the "Tiffany Girls"), in New York City. They chose the colors and type of glass to be used in the studios' famous glass items. Before her arrival the lamps had a static and geometric look and feel. As the creative force behind the Tiffany lamp she was director, designer and crafter of the more than thirty Tiffany lamps produced by the company; among them the famous Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony, and from all accounts her first — the Daffodil.

Virtually nothing was known about Driscoll until quite recently. It had always been thought that Louis Comfort Tiffany was the chief designer behind the greatest of the Tiffany leaded lamps.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Biography

Clara Driscoll was born Clara Pierce Wolcott on April 2, 1861. 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 design school in Cleveland and working for a local furniture maker, she moved to New York and enrolled at the then new Metropolitan Museum Art School. Her artistic potential was apparent and she was hired by the famed Tiffany Studios. She remained there, designing and directing the designs of lamps, mosaics, windows, and other decorative objects for more than 20 years.

Driscoll's first husband, Frances Driscoll, died and she remained a widow until re-marrying in 1909, an event which ended her career at Tiffany, as married women were not allowed to work there.

All records for Tiffany Studios were lost after it closed in the early 1930s. It was only through the combined efforts of Martin Eidelberg (professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University), as well as Nina Gray, an independent scholar and former curator at the New-York Historical Society, and Margaret K. Hofer (curator of decorative arts, New-York Historical Society), that Clara Driscoll's involvement in designing Tiffany lamps was discovered.

While doing research for a book on Tiffany at the Queens Historical Society, Nina Gray found the historically valuable letters written by Driscoll to her mother and sisters during the time she was employed at Tiffany.^[3][2] The New York Times quoted the curator, Nina 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 seen the correspondence independently and after comparing notes 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.

The New-York Historical Society's exhibit "A New Light on Tiffany" (November 27, 2006) showcasing Driscoll's (and her "girls'") work was the result of the investigative efforts of Eidelberg,Nina 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 Margi Hofer, Martin Eidelberg, and Nina Gray 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." ^[6]

References

• A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls D Giles Limited: London.
• New-York Historical Society to Shine "A New Light on Tiffany"
• Jeffrey Kastner (February 25, 2007). "Out of Tiffany's Shadow, a Woman of Light". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/arts/design/25kast.html?ref=arts. Retrieved 2008-08-10. 

1. ^ Kate Taylor (February 13, 2007). "Tiffany's Secret Is Over". New York Sun. http://www.nysun.com/arts/tiffanys-secret-is-over/48495/. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "The exhibition was made possible by the discovery of Driscoll's letters by two of the show's curators, an emeritus professor of art history at Rutgers University, Martin Eidelberg, and Nina Gray, an independent curator" 
2. ^ ^{a b} Caitlin A. Johnson (April 15, 2007). "Tiffany Glass Never Goes Out Of Style". CBS News.com. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/15/sunday/main2685085.shtml. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "Experts ... Nina Gray and Martin Eidelberg are friendly rivals in Tiffany scholarship who independently discovered hundreds of the long, detailed letters Driscoll wrote to her family. "I just blurted it out and said, 'You won't believe what I found — letters from Clara Driscoll,' and she replied, in this kind of deadpan voice, 'I already know them," Eidelberg said." 
3. ^ ^{a b} Jeffrey Kastner (February 25, 2007). "Out of Tiffany’s Shadow, a Woman of Light". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/arts/design/25kast.html?pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "He was co-curator of the exhibition with Nina Gray, an independent scholar ... and the historical society’s curator of decorative arts, Margaret K. Hofer." 
4. ^ Vivian Goodman (January 14, 2007). "Exhibition Honors Woman Behind the Tiffany Lamp". National Public Radio (NPR). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6854160. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "But arts and crafts were second nature to Driscoll, the country girl who was 20 years Tiffany's junior..." 
5. ^ Staff writer (April 7, 2006). "Spare Times". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E1D61030F934A35757C0A9609C8B63. Retrieved 2009-11-16. "'THE GENIUS OF LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY,' Green-Wood Cemetery, Fifth Avenue and 25th Street, Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn. A lecture ... a curator of the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass at the Queens Museum of Art, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park." 
6. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1904832350

Persondata
Name	Driscoll, Clara
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Date of birth	1861
Place of birth
Date of death	1944
Place of death