Clara and Mr. Tiffany

  And we went round again.

  “Syrian.”

  “Persian.”

  “Hindustani.”

  “A veritable Aesthetic Movement warehouse,” Mr. York concluded.

  “It’s a good thing that he didn’t create woman,” George said. “Instead of giving her two breasts, she would have ten, and each one would be decorated with a dozen nipples.”

  Mr. York chortled, but Alice blushed and quickly diverted our attention to a window of iridescent and opalescent glass in orange and russet combined with abalone shell fragments in a dense pattern.

  “Butterflies! No wonder he approved my butterfly lamp.”

  Vines and blossoms and butterflies swirled around a disk made of curved strips of orange ripple glass. The girls gathered around me to study it, with Frank in their midst, scratching his head.

  “Is it a window or a mosaic?” Lillian asked.

  I was puzzled. “It’s hard to tell in this light.”

  Joe Briggs saw us clustered around it and explained. “It’s both. Some of the pieces are backed with copper and gold leaf so the reflected light picks that up, like a mosaic, but the metal is so thin that daylight transmitted through the glass changes the colors completely. In the daytime, light from the room behind makes that orange disk white, and then you can see that it represents a Japanese paper lantern. The butterflies are yellow and gold then.”

  The younger girls marveled in whispers, craned their necks, darted off to examine everything.

  “Except for that magical window,” said Mary, “his house is a far sight different from what we do. It’s so old-looking.”

  “Isn’t it just,” Minnie said in her clipped English accent. “Rather like the Arabian Nights.”

  “Himself wants it a certain way, I suppose,” said Mary.

  Joe pointed out other things, as though by rights of earlier visits, he could serve as guide. Frank followed him, looking curiously at everything.

  Even George was wide-eyed and quiet, taking it all in. Discreetly, he directed my attention to a woman standing with imperial grace at the far end of the room. Her flowing, waistless gown of antique gold was accented by a long peacock-blue sash descending from the back of her neck nearly to the floor like the tail of an exotic bird.

  “Absolutely waistless! I’ve never seen—”

  “Aesthetic Dress,” he said.

  “That’s Mrs. Tiffany.”

  Mr. Tiffany was deep in conversation, so George and I ventured to greet Mrs. Tiffany and their twin daughters without him. I got through by uttering a few commonplaces until she brought us over to him, pronouncing Louis the French way, as in Louis Quatorze. I introduced George to the Sun King as an artist and decorator, but I couldn’t bring myself to say “Lou-ey.”

  “George Waldo,” Mr. Tiffany said, thinking. “Isn’t it you who painted the portrait of the actress Modjeska in the Players Club?”

  “Yes.”

  “Extraordinary. A beautiful Pre-Raphaelite fantasy.”

  “It’s your home that’s extraordinary,” George said. “A many-cultured fantasy.”

  “Would you like to see more of it? My studio, for example?”

  At that he took us up a curious little winding stair and into a vestibule where tall carved wooden doors that he said came from Ahmadabad announced the studio as if it were the palace of an Indian rajah. It seemed miles long. We peered up to find the room dissolving into night sky.

  “There’s no ceiling,” I said.

  “Yes, there is. Forty-five feet up,” Mr. Tiffany said.

  From that darkness a dizzying array of mouth-blown globes and heavy glass lanterns in Near Eastern shapes hung on ornate chains of different lengths. Not ordinary chains. Of course not. These had cast-iron elephants, bells, peacocks, and female figures between the elongated links. The lanterns cast colored light over Persian carpets, tiger pelts on ottomans, and velvet divans in dark, rich hues to create a luxurious but heavy atmosphere.

  In the center of the room, a colossus of a tapered chimney soared into the gloom. At its flared base, four cave-like fireplace openings, one facing in each direction, looked as though they were sculpted from granite. They gave off flickering light, subtle warmth, wisps of smoke, and an aromatic fragrance.

  “Is it a chimney or the trunk of a great cedar?” said George, a style assessment, not a question. “It’s both, and that long Art Nouveau bracket for hanging plants attached to it is a branch.”

  “I wanted to bring the forest inside my house so that I might live in nature.”

  Along one wall a cushioned bench hung under a shimmering canopy of beaded cloth. I immediately nestled in among its pillows and let it swing. My gaze fell upon two stuffed flamingoes and the actual stone basin he had painted in Feeding the Flamingoes. Above it hung the round goldfish bowl. I uttered a little cry, and he pointed out his original painting on a wall nearby.

  “I’ve officially changed the name from Feeding the Flamingoes to Taming the Flamingoes.” He gave me a sympathetic look.

  There was another doubling of the room in a tall, narrow oil painting depicting a slice of the chimney and one mouthlike fireplace on one edge, a cluster of columns on the other edge, and three pumpkin- and gourd-shaped blown lamps hanging over a giant philodendron and palm. On the hearth floor, a woman gazed into the fire. She was loosely draped in the folds of an Indian sari, maroon with a band of gold stitching, leaving her shoulder, arm, and back alluringly bare.

  Mr. Tiffany saw me admiring it. “It’s Lou,” he said.

  I knew it already, for the love conveyed in every feature.

  George turned in a circle, arms out to his sides, palms up. “This is Xanadu, and you are Kublai Khan.”

  “Oh-ho! I like that,” Mr. Tiffany said.

  “Even though from different origins, everything is in harmony,” George said. “It’s Oriental in effect but not in every detail. It’s as if you had gone to the same sources of inspiration that Eastern cultures had, but you’ve evolved your own conception of their principles.”

  “You have keen aesthetics, Mr. Waldo. It has always been my creed to use whatever seems fittest in wood or stone or glass, no matter its cultural origin.”

  “Don’t you think that beauty can also originate from within?” I asked. “From a person’s joy or sadness, and not just from external cultural sources?”

  “Of course. Like your butterfly lamp. When a person observes nature, his emotions affect his artistic vision. You were obviously bewitched by those butterflies, and I want you to be enchanted by more things in nature.”

  “That won’t be hard.”

  “Do you actually work here?” George asked.

  “I play here. Every day.”

  He led us through a forest of easels with partially finished paintings to his banquet-sized drawing table in the depths of the room.

  “Lately I’m getting interested in clocks,” he said, and showed us some drawings. “People who can’t afford a window can afford a clock, and that will bring beauty into more homes. Some day, Clara, design me a clock that will make people value time.”

  Design me.… Design me.… It was happening. After only one lamp and a couple of windows, he was thinking of me as a designer. I had contributed something unique and expressive of me. I had distinguished myself, and he would use my talents again and again—just what I longed for.

  “Let something else bewitch you, and find a way to use it as a motif, like you did with the butterflies. Desire takes over where knowledge leaves off. So many things are yet to be explored. Enamels, for example. And amber.”

  He dug his hand into a bowl full of irregular amber beads. “Do it. It feels so nice.” We both did, and smiled at the sensation, letting them pour out between our fingers.

  “And shells.” He put a large polished chambered nautilus into George’s hands. “Touch it to your cheek,” he said. George did, and then he put it alongside mine. Its cool smoothness felt like the deep sea. “Cover your ear with it.” T
he sound of distant surf transported me. “Hold it up to the light.” Its iridescent surface revealed striations of pale pink and lime green and aqua. “With a light source inside, the colors are even more pronounced and you can see the veining. I’ve designed a bronze stand, and it will be wired as a small electrolier.”

  He held out a large Chinese bowl full of pieces of mother-of-pearl. “Put your hand in here. Play with them.”

  “They feel like nuggets of satin,” I said. Most had smooth surfaces, but some were distressed like baroque pearls. “The smooth ones are elegant, but I think the rough ones are more interesting.”

  “You’re thinking in the right direction.” With a flourish he showed us his cuff links. They were irregular mother-of-pearl disks edged in silver. “You’ll gain in skill and vision every project you do. Pick out some pieces that appeal to you. Make something with them. Whatever you’d like.”

  A lamp. It would be a deep sea lamp.

  “Do I have to keep costs down?”

  “No.”

  CHAPTER 20

  SEA HORSE

  A WEEK OF PONDERING PASSED BEFORE I TOLD ALICE ABOUT the ten mother-of-pearl pieces Mr. Tiffany had let me choose. She picked them up from my worktable one at a time and rubbed her thumb over their whorls and irregularities, each one the size of a quarter.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Yes, but wanting to use them and then making a design to show them off is something like buying a dress to match a pair of gloves.”

  “Last time you started with the shade and then designed the base. Now you’re doing the opposite.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter. I might be able to use a tin umbrella pail as a foundation, and on that, I’ll build up the shape in modeling clay. Two feet tall.”

  “Awfully tall for oil.”

  “I want it dramatic. Maybe there could be a removable inner canister for the oil, like an oatmeal boiler. It would be easier to fill that way.”

  “Where will the shells go?”

  “I think at the shoulder. It’s the most prominent part. I’ll press some of the shells into the clay and rough out my design to show Mr. Tiffany. If he says it’s worth pursuing, I’ll have Giuseppe make a plaster cast. I’ll draw the design on that.”

  “Do you have a design in mind?”

  “That’s where you come in. I need a design for the shade too. Let’s go to the aquarium in Battery Park on Sunday.”

  …

  WE WERE ENTRANCED BY FISH—tiny, rotund, freckled, striped, sleek, bulbous, mean-looking, sweet, spiky, and spooky. For the lampshade, we chose to use some beautiful coral-colored ones, slightly silver-blue on their bellies, with double-pointed tails. We would set them among seaweed leaves in greens and ochers against blue ripple glass.

  Looking at the sea horses, I murmured, “What a God, to have conceived of so delicate and calm a creature. Nothing perturbs them. They’re at peace no matter what floats by. If only one could live that way.”

  “They look ancient,” Alice said.

  “And innocent.”

  “You’ve got to use them.”

  “On the mosaic base, I think.”

  We sat on a bench in front of the tank and drew them in various attitudes, some with tails curled forward and their long snouts pointed down, others stretched out with their backs arched. I also drew fans and branches of coral and noted the colors, rose madder dulled with aquamarine, and burnished yellow-orange.

  “Don’t copy nature,” Mr. Tiffany had said. Let nature merely suggest. Express yourself through nature. That made the drawing flow.

  ON MONDAY I CAME to work anxious to see again the clay form I had modeled over an umbrella pail. I removed the dampened muslin. Pieces had cracked and fallen away. The clay had shrunk, and the form was ruined.

  “This will not destroy me,” I said firmly to my penciled sea horses.

  I went to see Giuseppe without a form, just with drawings, side view and top view, with dimensions. He said he could work from them to make a plaster model, but I’d have to do some carving to get exactly the shape I had in mind.

  I thought it prudent to involve Agnes, so after I made my preliminary drawings of sea horses, coral, and seaweed for the mosaic base, I asked for her advice on positioning the elements naturally.

  “There is absolutely nothing like this that I’ve seen in the decorative arts,” Agnes said. Her eyes shone, giving me a rush of satisfaction.

  THE TIFFANY WEEK ENDED Thursdays at five-fifteen, when all the accounts had to be collected for reconciliation—the week’s work detailed and recorded, the cost of time and materials figured, and the payroll determined as well, for submission first thing on Fridays. On Thursday afternoons, three o’clock arrived to throw cold water on whatever project I was working on. With dampened spirit, I had to break away, armed with my clipboard, to gather the week’s charges from other departments.

  In the metal room I was stopped by Alex, the foreman, with a pencil behind his ear and some papers covered with labored figures.

  “I thought I’d have to hunt you down. Got anything against me this week?” he said in the slang of the metal room, a way of asking if his department owed my department any money.

  “Yes, three dollars and a half for lamp design.”

  He recorded it mournfully, and I said, “Got anything against me?”

  “Only fifty cents.”

  “What for?”

  “Aciding on window 7378.”

  “But my department is doing all the aciding on that number.”

  “Well, my man mixes the acid.”

  “Oh, all right.” I borrowed his pencil to make a note of it, and hurried on to the elevator.

  As I rang the bell, he called after me, “You forgot to give me back my pencil.”

  Pencil returned, we each went our separate ways to make out our puny bills against each other.

  After dinner, with my accounting sheets spread out on the dining table, I recounted this trifling routine to Bernard while I laboriously entered the amounts and figured the receipts and expenditures.

  “What an exorbitant amount of time this accounting takes,” I said.

  “There are certainly more expedient ways for the departments to tally the charges,” he said.

  “I’m sure there are, but this one is entrenched, and as a result, I’m forced to do double duty. I refuse to let go of the designing, but I almost regret that I’m good at managing production. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have to fiddle around with numbers every week.”

  “Regret it enough to hide it?” Bernard asked.

  “No. It’s just that it’s a mixed blessing. What I want to do and what I have to do are always fighting each other like alley cats.”

  “But you love it all the same, don’t you?” He gave me a penetrating look that nearly unnerved me.

  “Yes. I love it all the same.”

  MR. TIFFANY HAD SAID he wanted a clock, so I took the risk to design one, determined that he would get a simple one before the month was out. I thought how smooth and lustrous the smaller mother-of-pearl pieces were, so I went to the purchasing agent and asked him to get five hundred flat-backed mother-of-pearl beads, each about a quarter of an inch in diameter.

  The next morning I spent a couple of hours way downtown on Maiden Lane, a narrow street south of the Brooklyn Bridge near the docks where the silversmiths and clockmakers had their dark little workshops. One German fellow with curly gray muttonchops had several clock mechanisms, some with short pendulums, ready to be mounted into cases, and one already in a wooden case with a beveled glass door about eight inches high.

  “How much for one of these?” I asked, pointing to the mechanisms.

  “Come back three days. I put it in.”

  “No. I don’t want it in.”

  “No case?” His thick eyebrows came together in a hedge of puzzlement.

  “That’s right. No case.”

  He scowled. “No. I don’t sell. Only finished clocks in boxes.” br />
  Pride in his workmanship. I understood that.

  “How about if I buy that one in the case now, and two more without the cases?”

  He squinted at me as though trying to figure me out, but need overcame his suspicions, and he said eagerly, “Yes. Now I sell.”

  He called his wife, who came out from the back room in her carpet slippers, chewing. In loud, fast German, he directed her to start wrapping the pieces in newspaper, and he hastened to add up the price, all the time scurrying about as if he wanted to be done with this irrational woman.

  Back in the studio I found some rectangular pieces of opalescent glass in swirls of green and blue for panels to be bordered by rows of mother-of-pearl beads. I was on my way to please Mr. Tiffany with clocks.

  “Q, R, S, T, U. WHAT COMES NEXT?” George asked at dinner.

  “W,” I said, just to be contrary.

  “Nooo. Who started the Staten Island Ferry?” George asked.

  “Mr. Staten,” Alice answered, picking up my cue.

  “Wrong again.”

  “Who lives in Hyde Park?”

  “Edward Hyde,” Francie replied. “Dr. Jekyll’s evil side.”

  “Very wrong.”

  “Then Queen Victoria,” Bernard said. “Actually, it’s a bit of a jaunt away.”

  “Such as she is to the Irish, refusing us home rule,” Merry muttered.

  “Wrong Hyde Park,” George said. “What ought to be the most comfortable room in a house?”

  “The loo,” Bernard said.

  Mrs. Hackley hiccuped her disapproval of saying that vile word at the dinner table.

  “The bedroom,” I suggested quickly to stop her from chastising him.

  “Clara’s right. So don’t you get it?”

  “No. We don’t get it because we’re all bloomin’ eejits,” Merry said. “I have a house full of ’em. Enough to send a decent landlady like me to an early grave. Ignore ’im and maybe he’ll go away.”

  “I think you’d better tell them, George,” Hank said.

  “Have you figured it out?”

  “Simple,” Hank said. “V comes after U and stands for Vanderbilt, ‘the Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt, who started ferrying people from Staten Island to Manhattan in a secondhand sailboat when he was a boy, built up a shipping line, then a rail line, and became the richest man on the continent. His grandson Frederick recently purchased an estate on the Hudson called Hyde Park only to tear it down and rebuild it, and hired our own George Waldo to decorate the most comfortable room in the mansion, Vanderbilt’s bedroom.”