Clara and Mr. Tiffany

  “What are you going to do for a base?” Miss Stoney asked, skepticism sharpening her voice.

  A simple blown vase for the oil wouldn’t add much. I needed this to be so spectacular that Mr. Tiffany would shout to have it made.

  “A base could be made in mosaics,” I said on impulse. “It could depict the meadow.” Mr. Tiffany had used mosaics vertically on columns in the chapel. Joe Briggs could tell me how to get mosaics to adhere to an urn shape tapering to a bullet point at the bottom to hold the oil. Its height and slenderness would make it more elegant than the bulbous oil canisters of blown lamps. I sketched it as I imagined.

  On our outing, the butterflies had risen above a field of goldenrod, but those blossoms were too spiky to be made in mosaic. The perfect flower would be the evening primrose, the creamy yellow variety, like those edging the neighbor’s field on our road in Tallmadge, Ohio. Their flat petals would be easy to cut and would echo the shapes and colors of the butterflies. I went to the reference library on the second floor and found a shelf full of books of flower drawings but no primroses. And the season had passed.

  What to do? Just describe it? This was beyond any minimal designing I had done on windows, so it was a risk. I wasn’t considered a designer like Agnes was, but nobody told me I couldn’t become one. Even a dandelion has aspirations of being a peony in full purple storm. On my desk I caught sight of the dollop of glass Tom Manderson had given me. Trust, he had said. I put it in my pocket for good luck.

  With excitement pulsing in my temples, I loaded onto a cart the wire-and-muslin shade form, my fan-shaped drawing watercolored by Alice, Alistair’s glass-covered specimen tray, and several pieces of opalescent yellow and amber glass. It was important that Mr. Tiffany see everything at once. I checked my appearance in a mirror and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

  Passing the business office on the way, I found Mr. Tiffany sitting at Mr. Mitchell’s desk with an electric fan blowing on him, making his hair move like tall grass in the wind.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” I asked.

  “Yes. Come in. I can’t work in this humidity.”

  I spread everything out. “Do you remember years ago when you were working on the drawings for the chapel? I looked at the cover of the baptismal font and imagined a smaller version in translucent glass as a lampshade. It was to be our secret until the right time.”

  He nodded and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

  “Isn’t it inevitable that you should make leaded-glass lampshades, since you are as much in love with light as you are with color?”

  “I am.”

  I took that as encouragement to go on. “I’ve been thinking how lovely it would be to wrap a window of yellow butterflies around a sun—I mean a light source.”

  He studied Alistair’s butterflies and my drawing. “It just might be possible. Go ahead and work on it a little farther.”

  “I can’t do much more without having a clay mold to work on.”

  “You have no experience in clay. I’ll send Giuseppe Baratta in the plaster room to make a cast to your specifications.”

  Mr. Mitchell came in.

  “Look here, Mitch. A leaded-glass lampshade. Not a wall sconce. This one with butterflies, but it could just as well be flowers or foliage.”

  “An interesting notion,” Mr. Mitchell said, “but riddled with construction problems.”

  “I realize the shape of the shade is clumsy,” I said.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” Mr. Tiffany said. “Most new ideas start with something clumsy.”

  “I’d like it to suggest a cloud. If it’s possible, I’d like to pull in the bottom rim so it’s not so much like the dome of the baptismal font. More like a dollop.” I laid Tom’s dollop in front of him. “Like this.”

  Mr. Mitchell rubbed his chin. “If you make a watercolor on a transparency, I’ll hang it on that gas globe and think about it for a while.”

  “Think! I’ve already thought!” Mr. Tiffany said. “An entirely new line! Affordable for those who can’t afford a window. A new market, Mitch. You ought to like that. What about a base?”

  “I would like to complement the butterflies by suggesting that they are flying over a meadow. Instead of a blown base, it could be mosaic, couldn’t it? So that I could use the motif of primroses? They’re yellow, and the petal shapes echo the wing shapes.”

  “Brilliant. Brilliant! Mosaics freed from historical or religious context. Nature is a newer, less limited, context.” He shifted his gaze to me, placed his hands on his knees, and leaned toward me. “Do you realize what a huge step forward this is?”

  The intensity of his blue eyes sent me his fervor, and I felt hot with the knowledge that this was a moment of great importance for him, for me, for the company. For us. We were two artists connected by an idea, and he knew it as well as I.

  “I do now.”

  He began to draw quickly all over Mr. Mitchell’s clean blotter.

  “The base ought to be tall and thin.” He lengthened the word tall while he drew long vertical lines.

  “I was thinking about an urn shape narrowing to a point at the bottom.” He started over and drew an urn. “But I don’t know how to make it stand.”

  “A bronze armature with three legs could allow it to be suspended within it.” And he drew that too.

  How intoxicating it was to play off each other’s ideas.

  “Could the lines of the armature extend upward to support and enclose the shade as well?”

  “Yes! All of a piece. The flowers resembling butterflies!” He stumbled on flowers and butterflies. “But not anatomically or botanically precise.”

  When he came to drawing a primrose, he wavered off into vague lines.

  “Well, work out your own idea and show me.”

  My first design assignment! My own concept! This was what I had come back for!

  THE NEXT MORNING when I arrived at the studio, a pot of hothouse primroses stood on my desk. Agnes passed by and glanced at them.

  “An admirer?” she asked coolly.

  “Mr. Tiffany,” I said, floating in his new regard for me.

  She lowered her spectacles and looked over the top of them at me, blinked once, and walked away. What was that supposed to mean?

  Shrugging it off, I rotated the pot of primroses to see them all. They consisted of rosettes of leaves and sprays of blossoms, one, two, or three on tall, slender stalks. Each blossom had five cream-to-yellow flattish petals. I drew them as best I could, but I didn’t have Alice’s natural skill of shading to render shape. I called her over to help. We drew them botanically first, getting to know them as single flowers with narrow, pointed leaves before designing how they would be placed in relation to one another.

  Agnes passed by once more and cast a look at our drawings on the way. The third time, curiosity got the better of her and she asked what we were doing.

  “It’s the base for a lamp,” I said. “Leaded glass for the shade, mosaics for the base.”

  She pursed her thin lips. “Does Mr. Tiffany know?” Her tone was laced with reprimand, which brought a minute scowl from Alice.

  “Oh, yes. He liked the idea,” I said.

  “How will you ever apply pieces of glass to a surface that isn’t flat and horizontal?”

  “Against a plaster mold. He’s having his mold maker create one. I’ll watercolor the shapes and draw the lead lines right on it.”

  “Freehand?”

  “No. Using patterns from this fan-shaped cartoon of one-third of the round.” I showed it to her.

  “It’s impossible to select glass against something solid.” A statement delivered with brusque certainty.

  I chose to take it as a challenge rather than a wish that I would fail or give up.

  “I suppose I’ll have to select on a glass easel against the light, just like we do for windows, foil the edges, and then transfer the pieces to the mold before it goes to the metal shop.”

  “How wi
ll they stick?”

  “Wax? Like we do for windows?” I wasn’t at all sure wax would adhere to plaster.

  “I still don’t know how you’re going to make flat glass fit a round mold.”

  “I don’t know either, yet. I’ll have to work by trial and error to know how small the pieces will have to be to create a smooth curve.”

  Alice straightened up from her drawing. “Don’t worry, Agnes. She’ll figure it out.”

  Agnes shrugged and went back to her studio. She was keeping her distance from this. She must have had reasons. I ought not to pry directly, but maybe someday I could pry open her crust.

  Mr. Tiffany came in for his Monday critique of windows under production. He looked at my fan-shaped design of butterflies that would lie against the plaster form, our drawings of primroses and of the tall urn shape of the base. I had drawn a supporting ring that would be bronze, encircling the urn just below its wider shoulder, which connected a delicate trio of legs below to a cage of ribs above that would secure the shade in place.

  “Good that you have the direction of the ribs following the direction the butterflies are flying. Try a slight reverse curve where they attach to the ring.”

  “All right. How are the flowers?”

  “Too tight. You’re trying too hard. Take a good look at the actual primroses and butterflies, draw them if you like, but don’t copy nature. We are not botanists. We are artists. Suggest nature, but conventionalize it. Stylize it. Simplify it to its contour lines to convey structure. It’s artifice, after all.”

  “I see. Only the primness of primroses, without an unnecessary petal or flounce anywhere.”

  “There you go.”

  With that, he hadn’t just given me project approval. He had given me a joyful future.

  LITTLE BY LITTLE, I drew Agnes into the project. If she made some contribution, she would naturally be more supportive. In a few days, I asked her to critique my first attempt at designing where the flowers, stems, and leaves would be positioned on the base. Together we decided which blossoms would be open flat, which would still be buds, which would face backward or sideways, and where one might be missing a petal.

  “Do you think a primrose is conscious of things, in a primitive way?” I asked.

  “What things?” Agnes asked.

  “The sense of the earth warming up, the feeling of expansion and reaching.”

  “Like we feel when we stretch our arms?”

  “Yes. And when we stretch our minds. Does a primrose feel a new airiness and liberty as it pokes through the darkness of soil? Does it appreciate the warmth of the sun, its source? Is it aware of the cramped tightness in its buds, and the release of the strain when something wants to come out?”

  “I suppose it can’t stop itself from growing and opening.”

  CHAPTER 19

  XANADU

  NOT FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER I SENT DOWN THE WEEK’S ACCOUNTING sheets to Mr. Mitchell, he appeared at the doorway to the studio.

  “Do you realize what the total is for that lamp of yours?”

  “Yes. I—”

  “Counting the costs of the glass, the urn, the metal, the fittings, the foundry work—”

  “And the hours I put in designing it, and selecting and cutting the glass. And Miss Northrop’s time and Miss Gouvy’s. And Giuseppe Baratta’s time and materials. I included everything. Mr. Tiffany is very pleased with it. He wants more of them.”

  “Why this wood-shop charge?”

  “Plaster molds are good for creating painted prototypes, but they won’t hold up with multiple uses. We need to score the pattern pieces onto a mold with a stylus. Soft wood is good for that.”

  “Well, the total comes to two hundred forty-eight dollars and thirty cents.”

  “I know. I did the addition.”

  “What that means is that we’ll have to price it at five hundred dollars.”

  “Whooh! Twice the cost? I didn’t realize.”

  That was ten months’ room and board for me. To think that someone might be wealthy enough to buy it. To think that it was my first design.

  “Once it goes into production, my design time doesn’t need to be factored in,” I said.

  “We have to be reasonable, Mrs. Driscoll. We do want more, true, but not such extravagant ones that require so much time. Couldn’t it be possible that the others you make from this model have an enamel base rather than mosaic?”

  “It would lose some of the handmade quality of glass sectiliae cut to the shapes outlined on the cartoon, and perhaps some of the luminosity too.”

  “I’d like you to try it. It could be priced less, and we could have more on the market. Who do you have who knows enameling?”

  “Alice Gouvy.”

  “Good. Get her started on it.”

  “All right. After we finish the eight mosaic ones that Mr. Tiffany wants.”

  And after I start a second design. After Mr. Tiffany and Mr. Mitchell see me as a regular, prolific designer.

  COMING BACK FROM LUNCH at the boardinghouse, where I often lie in my darkened room to rest my eyes for twenty minutes, I saw Joe Briggs pinning something to the notice board in the corridor. Joe’s talents had developed, and he served as Mr. Tiffany’s assistant at times, and as mine when we did mosaic work, and was practically running the Men’s Mosaic Department even though he was younger than the others.

  “What’s that?” I asked, not wanting to put on my glasses until I needed to at my desk.

  “The Tiffany Ball. It’s at his house this year. December fifteenth.”

  My birthday. Amid the grand celebration, only I would know I was thirty-seven on that evening.

  “He wants all his employees to see his house as an example of the Aesthetic Movement,” Joe said. “A synthesis of all the arts, so that we’ll create in accord with his taste.”

  “As if we don’t already.”

  “ ‘There may be a division of labor but no division of mind,’ it says here. Don’t you want to see his mansion? It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. I’ve made deliveries there.”

  “Of course. I’ve been dying to. This will cause quite a stir.”

  It was amusing to see the ripple of news spread through the studio, the speculations of what it might be like, and the animated discussions of what to wear and who would escort them.

  I knew immediately whom I would ask. I put on my glasses and made a quick sketch of the line drawing of the five-story house that was on the posted notice, complete with peaked roof, three gables, oversized arched entrance, and daring suspended turret at the corner. Under it I wrote, “If you would like to explore this fabled residence on December 15, designed by Stanford White and decorated by Louis Tiffany himself, come to dinner at 44 Irving Place and bring a new completed painting.” It was manipulation but justified.

  A WEEK LATER I came home from work to find a painting covered with a cloth propped against a table in the parlor. George sat cross-legged on the floor next to it like some East Indian yogi.

  “Om,” he intoned. “Don’t just stand there. Take a look.”

  I lifted the cloth and saw a lake in muted blue-gray, an empty gray rowboat beached, the oars left haphazardly, vaporous trees in the russet distance, and one lone goose aloft, pure white chest and underwings, black wing tips, neck stretched forward into the unknown. Even the oars akimbo wrenched my heart. Haste. Absentmindedness. Flight. The painting was subtle, sincere, and serious, not at all like his usual playful style.

  George sat motionless with his lips pulled in, pained and waiting.

  “It’s exquisite, George. You’ve painted his soul.”

  THE NIGHT OF THE BALL, George arrived in top form, wearing a loose jacket of burgundy velvet and a flowing black silk tie. He flipped it about so I would notice it. “In case this is a black-tie affair.” He spun around to show off the flaring unfitted jacket with one high button and satin binding on the sleeves.

  “It’s rather like a bed jacket, isn’t it?” I sai
d. “An androgynous one.”

  He pouted for a second and then rallied. “It’s the Aesthetic Dress Movement, the very synonym of style, loose garments like the Pre-Raphaelites, introduced into society by Oscar Wilde. Out with corsets and strangling paper collars. Down with restrictions. One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art. I thought Mr. Tiffany would appreciate it.”

  “If not him, then his wife,” Alice said. She had invited Mr. York, because he’s a product designer, she had said, as though she needed to declare a reason.

  The four of us arrived at a mansion indeed, on the corner of East Seventy-second and Madison. Taking up four large lots, it dwarfed the mansions of Fifth Avenue. Mr. York called it Romanesque Revival. The arched entrance, wide enough for two carriages to go abreast, had a medieval-looking iron portcullis that could descend and skewer any marauders who dared to lay siege.

  “Don’t worry. It isn’t serious,” George said. “It’s just … style. Someday, there will be a name for things like this.”

  “Such as bed jackets as evening dress, and operas, and pictorial windows?” I said.

  A courtyard beyond the portcullis was surrounded by loggias, balconies, and a grand staircase. We entered a wrought-iron elevator tended by an elevator boy in traditional evening dress who took us to the fourth floor. A ballroom of immense proportions was surrounded by tiers of carved balustrades. Favrile blown vases and flowering plants were everywhere. Walking on Oriental carpets and animal pelts, I felt as though I were entering an exotic Eastern country. No surface was left unadorned. The walls were stenciled with intricate designs, the ceiling ribbed without any square corners, alcoves between pillars canopied by carved cornices, the chimney breast faced with iridescent sea-green glass, cabinets and walls encrusted with round Japanese sword guards, wine casks of teak fretwork inlaid with ivory.

  “Moorish,” George said.

  “Indian,” I replied.

  “Punjabi,” Alice said.

  “Turkish,” declared Mr. York.