In a letter dated June 29, 1898, Driscoll wrote about how her Butterfly lamp came to be. Her idea, described to Louis Comfort Tiffany, was for a glass shade depicting golden butterflies against a pale blue sky scattered with wispy clouds. The metal base would include a glass mosaic depicting yellow primroses on stems with leaves of many shades of green.
Tiffany was so excited by the scheme that he started drawing ideas on a blotter, but, Driscoll wrote, “he wavered off into such vague lines that you could scarcely distinguish them from the gray of the blotter.”
“And then,” she added, “he would say — ‘well, work out your own idea.’”
Once her design was approved, the Tiffany girls got to work: One drew a cartoon of the design to scale on tracing paper and placed it under glass over a light box. Another selected colored glass from sheets measuring roughly 15 by 15 inches. Still another cut pieces from the glass, paying close attention to color and striation. Another staff member then cut a piece of thin copper into narrow, noodle-like strips and bent, or “foiled,” them around the edges of the pieces, so that each could be soldered into place.
The women did every step of the process except the soldering, which was done by a men’s glass-cutting department. (Only the men were allowed to work with heating tools.) The entire assembled shade was then electroplated.
Besides lamps, both the men’s and women’s departments also designed and executed stained-glass windows — or at least until 1903. That year, the Tiffany company acceded to a demand by the Lead Glaziers and Glass Cutters’ Union, which did not admit women, that only union members — that is, men — be allowed to make the windows.
But the women did design and execute small objets d’art, like candlesticks, picture frames and tea screens — three-sided leaded glass panels that stood about 7½ inches high and that were placed around a teakettle being heated by burners to keep a breeze from blowing out the flames.
Driscoll was smart, pragmatic and “intrepid,” the curator Hofer said. In April 1899, Driscoll and another designer, Alice Gouvy, created the Dragonfly lamp to sell for $250 (about $9,000 in today’s money). One customer, a woman, wanted to buy it on the spot, but Tiffany said she had to wait: The prototype was to go to London for an exhibit at the Grafton Galleries. Driscoll would go on to make three more Dragonflies, one for that customer, one for the 1900 Paris World’s Fair and one for display at the Tiffany Studios showroom.
