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dd20century · 5 years

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Clara Wolcott Driscoll: Tiffany Studios’ Brightest Light

“This is rather difficult work, but when one has a fondness for a certain brand of industry, she does not pause when a difficulty must be overcome.” -- Clara Wolcott Driscoll

This past summer the Munson Williams Proctor Museum in Utica, NY held an exhibition, “Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection.” The astonishing show featured Tiffany’s most iconic lamps, many designed by a woman whose name is largely forgotten now, Clara Wolcott Driscoll. The women who assembled Mrs. Driscoll’s designs were popularly referred to as “Tiffany Girls,”(1), and they worked under her in Tiffany’s Women's Glass Cutting Department. Driscoll was the designer behind many of the best well-known lamps to emerge from Tiffany Studios: Daffodil, Wisteria, Dragonfly, and Peony lamps (2).

Clara Wolcott Driscoll for Tiffany Studios (1900), Daffodil Shade (detail). Photo credit: Telome4 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14892217 Image source.

Young Clara Pierce Wolcott

Clara Pierce Wolcott was born in Talmadge, Ohio in 1861. Her father, Elizur V. Wolcott studied theology and aspired to be a missionary but his poor health prevented that dream from becoming a reality. Instead, Wolcott became a farmer and teacher (3). Tragically, Wolcott died in 1873, forcing his wife Fannie to find work as a teacher in order to support Clara and her three younger sisters (3). Fannie Wolcott who had attended the Talmadge Academy was determined that her daughters would also receive an education. With her family connections, Fannie placed “Clara with relatives living near the excellent (and free) Central High School”(3) in Cleveland, Ohio.

During her time at Central High School, young Clara demonstrated a keen interest in the natural world, especially flowers. This interest was undoubtedly encouraged by naturalist, Harriet Louise Keeler who was an instructor at the school during that time (3). After graduation, Clara enrolled in “the Western Reserve School of Design for Women (now the Cleveland Institute of Art)”(2). Not much, however, is known about Clara’s time there.

Sometime after Clara’s secondary studies were completed, she had “taken a position as designer for C. S. Ransom and Company, a Cleveland-based manufacturer of Moorish-influenced fretwork panels”(3).

Clara Driscoll Joins, Departs and then Rejoins Tiffany Studios

In the fall of 1888, Clara left Cleveland and headed to New York City to continue her art education “at the then-new Metropolitan Museum Art School” (2). Not long after her arrival in New York Louis Comfort Tiffany hired her as a designer in his studio. At Tiffany Studios Clara “earned the intricacies of glass selection and cutting,”(3) but after only a year with Tiffany, Clara left to get married as was the law in New York at that time. In 1989, Clara married Francis Driscoll who was thirty years her senior. In 1892 Mr. Driscoll died, and Clara, widowed, was rehired by Tiffany. Soon after Tiffany named Clara to head the Women’s Glasscutting Department (3). She had excellent managerial skills with an aptitude “for realizing a great profit from lamps and fancy goods”(4). When Clara took over the glasscutting department six women were working under her, eventually the staff would grow to thirty-five strong. These women earned the nickname “The Tiffany Girls”(5).

Clara Wolcott Driscoll (third row far left, wearing a white blouse) and the “Tiffany Girls” (circa 1904). Photo courtesy of The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of Art.

Challenges Faced by Clara Driscoll and the Women Working at Tiffany Studios

The women in her department selected the glass for the shades, “cutting the individual segments using templates, and wrapping them with copper foil”(5). The men would assemble the lamps by attaching the glass pieces to molds and soldering the copper foil edges together.

Over time rivalries developed between the men and the women workers. Men were “making windows, mosaics, and leaded shades” while the women for a time were relegated to only glass cutting. The men belonged to a union that “did not admit women,” so the women could not enjoy the same benefits as the men. Tiffany, however, paid his male and female employees equally which angered many of the men (5). “In 1903, the men threatened to strike in order to take away the women’s right to make windows”(5). Tiffany refused to meet the union’s demands but agreed to limit “the number of women in Driscoll’s department at 27”(5).

Mrs. Driscoll, herself became frustrated with faced staffing issues in the Women’s Glasscutting Department. Since married women were barred from employment Driscoll, would invest in developing a young talent only to lose the young woman to the wedding altar (5).

Clara’s Mystery Engagement

Mrs. Driscoll had also considered remarrying sometime between 1896 and 1897; she became engaged to Edwin Waldo the brother of artist George B. Waldo, one of Driscoll’s friends. While on route to meet his potential future in-laws in Ohio, Edwin inexplicably disappeared. No one heard from him for five years. Possibly due to the painful nature of this episode, Mrs. Driscoll never referred to it in any of her writings (3).

Clara Driscoll’s Major Works for Tiffany

During 1896 “Clara began experimenting with lamps”(5). Along with “Tiffany designer Agnes Northrop and fellow Cleveland art school classmate Alice Carmen Gouvy (also hired by Tiffany), Mrs. Driscoll designed the innovative Flying Fish lamp and Deep Sea mosaic and glass-jeweled base”(2). In addition to lamps, she designed “desk and boudoir accessories, often in combinations of glass, bronze, and mosaic”(3).

Driscoll drew her inspiration for her iconic lamp designs upon her life-long passion for and study of nature. Based upon information Driscoll shared in one of her letters, the daffodil lamp was her first important lamp design in 1900. That same year her design for the dragonfly lamp, “won a prize at the 1900 World’s Fair,”(6) that design, however, had long been credited to her boss, Louis Comfort Tiffany (6). The stunning wisteria lamp has also been attributed to Clara (5).

Clara Driscoll’s Later Years

In 1909 Driscoll left Tiffany Studio for the final time to marry Edwin Booth. While marriage ended Mrs. Driscoll’s professional career, she continued designing -- this time the product was colorful silk scarves. Edwin retired from his job managing an import business in 1929 just as the Great Depression struck, and the couple spent the remainder of their years in Florida. Their marriage would last thirty-five years until Clara’s death in 1944 (3).

Clara Driscoll’s Design Legacy

Clara Driscoll’s real role in Tiffany Studios went largely forgotten. When the company folded “in 1932, all the records were lost”(1). In 1953 when her sister Emily died, a trove of letters between the two sisters was discovered. It was not until almost 40 years later, however, that the letters were recognized by scholars when one of Driscoll’s relatives “Elizabeth A. Jones Yeargin transcribed a sampling from the letters for her work…self-published as a bound typescript titled The Pierce and Wolcott Letters”(3).

During Clara Driscoll’s career about thirty “or so lamps believed to have been designed by or created under”(6) her direction. These included “the Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony, and from all accounts, her first — the Daffodil”(2). One Wisteria Lamp sold for $492,500 on December 14, 2017, at Christie’s in New York (7). Driscoll’s lamps are held in the collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in numerous museums throughout the world. In recent years, numerous exhibitions of Tiffany lamps that featured Driscoll’s works, like the recent show in Utica, NY, have been held. The first to specifically acknowledge her contributions to Tiffany Studios was the New-York Historical Society 2007 show, “A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls.” Also that year, a book of the same title by Martin Eidelberg, Nina Gray and Margaret Hofer was published, and in 2011 Susan Vreeland published her historical novel Clara and Mr. Tiffany, based on the relationship between Mrs. Driscoll and Louis Comfort Tiffany (1). It may have been a long time coming, but the world is beginning to recognize the design genius of Clara Wolcott Driscoll.

References

Taylor, K., (13 February 2007). “Tiffany's Secret Is Over,” The New York Sun website. https://www.nysun.com/arts/tiffanys-secret-is-over/48495/

Wikipedia, (29 May 2019). Clara Driscoll (glass designer). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Driscoll_(glass_designer)

Bassett, M., (1 January 2012). “Breaking Tiffany's Glass Ceiling: Clara Wolcott Driscoll (1861-1944),” Cleveland Institute of Art website. https://www.cia.edu/news/stories/breaking-tiffanys-glass-ceiling-clara-wolcott-driscoll-1861-1944

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (2019). “Tiffany Studio Designers,” The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art website http://www.morsemuseum.org/louis-comfort-tiffany/tiffany-studios-designers

Gedal, A., (27 March 2015). “Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls,” The New York Historical Society and Museum website http://behindthescenes.nyhistory.org/tiffany-girls/

Kastner, J., (25 February 2007). “Out of Tiffany’s Shadow, a Woman of Light,” New York Times Online Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/arts/design/25kast.html?pagewanted=print

Vilinsky, B., (9 August 2019). “Collecting Guide: 10 Things to Know About Tiffany Lamps,” Christie’s website. https://www.christies.com/features/Tiffany-lamps-10-things-you-need-to-know-9542-3.aspx

#clara wolcott drsicoll #tiffany studios #louis comfort tiffany #product design #art glass

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tragedycoded · 1 month

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OC fighting tier list

Of course I'm going to do this one. Thank you so much for tagging me @the-golden-comet <3 I had to decide if I wanted to make all the picrews match or not. Chaos won.

Rules: Using this link, make a tier list of how capable your OCs are at winning a fight.

S Tier:

Royston | efficient when he isn't playing with his food in front of an audience.

Sullivan | highly trained, highly skilled, the only reason I considered bumping him down to A tier is bc he didn't kill any of the Huston brothers during the shootout at The Pig & Whistle but that was a tactical decision not a lack of skill.

A Tier:

Hofer | his performance during the Bad Ending aside, he has one-punched people in bar fights before. He's from Philadelphia LOL.

B Tier

Gott | demonstrates her fighting capacity in Book 2. Might get bumped up to A Tier in Book 3 once she's had some practice.

Neil | he's skilled in at least one martial art prior to his indoctrination into the Technocratic Union and is a deadly mf afterwards. ATP he's young and inexperienced and most of the fights we're going to see him in he's having to protect Khalid.

C Tier:

Clara | not likely to fight unless she's roused to anger, and she has to resort to instinctual/dirty fighting to survive. I've never put her in a Situation where she'd have to fight someone and I don't intend to; that's why her sister's joining us at the midpoint >:]

D Tier:

Khalid | has won fights before, has to rely on Science (read: magick) and has, at 18, zero experience with hand-to-hand or melee combat. His physical condition in Part 2 of ALM also impedes his ability to fight significantly.

Tag! and I'm making this open if you aren't on my tag list but want in <3

@lychhiker-writes @cowboybrunch @saturnine-saturneight @ashfordlabs @autism-purgatory

@noblebs @aintgonnatakethis @the-golden-comet @asablehart @mauvecatfic

@leahnardo-da-veggie @sableglass @gioiaalbanoart @words-after-midnight

@lavender-bloom @jev-urisk @wyked-ao3

#tag game #oc fighting tier list #doom metal love story #wip: a living machine #i'm not tagging all these mfs they don't have pages or anything anymore adlfka;dslfkj

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