Clara and Mr. Tiffany (12 page)

“
T
HE REAL ART, AFTER THE PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF A WINDOW
, is in the hands of the glass selector,” I said to the three I was promoting to glass selection, among them my friend Alice Gouvy, who had finished at Art Students League and had come to work here.

“Mr. Tiffany says the first thing a person sees in a window isn’t the subject. It’s the color,” I continued.

It was a perfect day to be teaching glass selection because light was pouring in through the big windows. I demonstrated by choosing an outlined shape from a cartoon, peeling off the corresponding pattern piece stuck on the clear-glass easel, and holding a large, uncut panel of multihued glass up to the cartoon and then to the easel to see what that glass would look like with light shining through it. I moved it around, turned it over, rotated it, and found an area on it that suited that section of the cartoon.

“One wrong piece, wrong in color or in texture or in degree of opacity or transparency, can ruin a window. By its disharmony, it will attract the eye.” I showed them pieces that would be mistakes.

“What if we can’t carry on because there isn’t a piece of glass that suits us?” asked Minnie Henderson, an English girl, very refined. She lived uptown with her parents and always wore a narrow black silk tie over her starched, high-necked white waist, a different one for each day of the week. Then she would start over with the Monday one the next week. Alice had found her for me at Art Students League.

“Then go to Miss Stoney, or come to me. We can combine two or three layers, even four or five, to get the exact color or depth that you need. Or I can go down to the basement and have a look.”

“Ask me,” Wilhelmina said from her worktable. “I like mucking around down there. We got thousands of types and colors of glass all stacked on their edges in wooden slots, thirty or forty shades of green, enough to make a body dizzy.”

“Since when have you been down there?”

“Since the first week I came to work, truth to tell. I went during lunch, and nobody stopped me. I’ve been all over this building. The furniture department, the fabrics and wallpapers room, the metal shop, the men’s glass studio. There’s a nice view of Madison Square Garden tower from the roof. Mr. Tiffany said always to look for beauty.”

Why was I surprised? It was Wilhelmina, after all. Brazen Wilhelmina, toughened by a crazed mother.

She had their attention, so I let her continue. “We got glass that’s ridged, rippled, bumpy with big and little bumps, rough, and wavy. Some bubbly like with blisters, and some like you scraped it with a comb.”

“How are they made that way?” Minnie asked.

I explained that texture makers, like bakers’ rolling pins, are rolled across molten glass poured into a pan at a precise temperature. “Sometimes glass shards or flakes of a different color are scattered before the glass is poured. That’s called fractured glass, or confetti glass.”

I showed them a piece that had lighter spots in it called mottles, which were good for showing light coming through petals and leaves.

“Don’t forget twig glass,” Wilhelmina said.

She had named glass with threads or striations of other hues twig glass because we used it for trees.

“Take advantage of irregularities and happy accidents of coloring. When you find an area that satisfies you, use a narrow grease pencil to trace the paper pattern onto the glass, and give it to your cutter.”

“What if it’s in the middle of a sheet of glass?” Alice asked.

“That’s all right. Nothing will be wasted.”

I showed them the traditional method of securing the pieces together with flexible lead strips called cames. “Look straight at the end of this came. See how it’s shaped like the capital letter
I
with a groove on both sides? That’s so it surrounds the edges of two pieces of glass at once. When all the pieces are stuck to the glass easel with wax and the cames
are in place, the window will go to the Glazing Department, where the cames will be soldered and patinated.”

“We’re not permitted to see it when it’s finished?” Minnie asked.

“Not usually.”

“But you can sneak into the men’s department when they’re having their beer break at three o’clock and take a look, and no one’s the wiser,” Wilhelmina said.

I pretended exasperation, and went on to explain Mr. Tiffany’s new method for smaller pieces or complicated patterns. In those cases, narrow strips of thin copper foil were wrapped around the edges of each piece of glass. In order to make it stick, the side of the foil that would touch the glass was coated with beeswax. The outer side of the foil was treated with muriatic acid, which allowed the solder to bond the foiled edges of two pieces of glass.

“After each piece of glass is cut and foiled, the assistants apply a spot of beeswax on the back of it and stick it onto the clear easel. That helps the selector see what she’s building up.”

Mr. Belknap came into the studio, so I gave the girls their assignments and had them begin. He showed me a small brochure titled
Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Glass Mosaics, 1895
, and told me to look on the second page. There it was in black and white: “Many of the firm’s great mosaic projects have been executed by women.”

“Wonder of wonders! It’s the first time he’s publicly acknowledged that the fifth floor exists. He didn’t waste much ink, though. Just a little more and he could have put in my name.”

“Then what would you do with it?”

Show it to Edwin. I wanted him to understand what I would be giving up if I married him. If. If. The big If.

I lifted my shoulders. “It just hurts to be anonymous.”

He offered a consoling look. “The Philharmonic is presenting a Mozart program. Are you at liberty to accompany me the Saturday after next?”

After only a moment’s hesitation I replied, “Yes. I love Mozart.”

“Then let’s meet at Sherry’s, Fifth Avenue at Thirty-seventh, at five o’clock for dinner first. Oh, and Mr. Tiffany wants you to come to his office.”

“Is something wrong?”

His precisely drawn eyebrows lifted in unison. “Something is very right!”

Humming mysteriously, he accompanied me downstairs, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. When I peeked in the open door little Napoléon was hopping, actually hopping from side to side, next to Mr. Nash.

“Look, Clara! A breakthrough! Iridescence on blown glass! We’ve done it!”

The second breakthrough: my first name. He used my first name.

A dozen vases stood on the display table. Iridescence bathed the full bodies of some, and only glinted in decorative gesture strokes on others. He pranced around the table, and we looked at them together from all angles.

“They’re gorgeous. I knew you would succeed.”

He was breathing the heady ether that lingers after high moments of life, and I was inhaling his exhale. Though my department had nothing to do with blown glass, he had called me downstairs to see what was so vital to him, knowing I would rejoice with him. That had to mean
something
.

“We’ve been calling it Favrile glass to make the Italian term,
fabrile
, for ‘handmade,’ sound more French,” Mr. Tiffany explained.

“When do you think you’ll begin selling them?”

“Not yet. This first year’s production will go to museums—the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs du Louvre, and the Imperial Museum of Tokyo.”

“What about the Metropolitan? You’re leaving out your own hometown!”

He lifted his chin, as though that would make him taller to match this success. “Henry Havemeyer has promised to purchase at least fifty to present to them. I’m setting aside the finest for him.”

With a pang, I thought, How could I ever think of leaving this melting pot of creativity? Or leaving him? He had mentioned my department in the brochure, a sure sign of broader recognition to come. And he had wanted to share his triumph with me—no other woman. Now,
with connections to the world’s greatest museums, what might the future of my own work be? Would it ever be in a museum? What about our secret of leaded-glass lampshades?

ON MY BED
that evening lay a letter under a single creamy white rose.

Oh, sweet Edwin! How fast his thinking flew. Feverishly fast. It bedazzled me.

Despite my admiration for his commitment to social concerns, he would have done just as well sending only the rose. One rose alone. I appreciated his restraint from Gilded Age excess, but more than that, I appreciated the reflectiveness a single bloom offers. This one, not fully open, had no blemish visible to signal a premature demise, unless one lurked unseen in the whorl of its petals. From what I could see now, the curled petals promised the joy of a full life in which, yes, there might be extraordinary adventures. Yet I longed to render roses in glass. My double-lobed heart split with a thunderous crack, Mr. Tiffany and Edwin each claiming half.

I sat on my bed in a haze, twirling the rose between my thumb and finger until a solution presented itself. I would have to convince Mr. Tiffany to change his policy—if not for all, then just for me, if I could get him to consider me indispensable. If I couldn’t, and if I did marry Edwin, I might come to resent it as my second marriage of sacrifice. In the months ahead, I would have to be brilliant enough that Mr. Tiffany would grant me anything.

I
ARRIVED AT WORK THE NEXT DAY TO FIND WILHELMINA SITTING
on my desk.

“I will be married soon,” she said, “so I guess that means I have to leave.”

“I won’t hear of it. You’re too young.” I gave her a backhand wave, and she hopped off.

“I’m eighteen. Old enough. My mother married younger than that in Sweden.”

“You told me you were seventeen when I hired you, and that was three years ago!”

She looked me dead in the eye. “I lied.”

Momentary shock turned to anger that I’d been duped. “You’re a liar, then? You lied about that black eye too. Your mother did that, didn’t she?”

“Doesn’t matter. I want what’s due me so I can set up a room for us.”

“For you and this butcher boy? You’re serious, then.”

“He has a name, Mrs. Driscoll. It’s Ned Steffens, and he loves me.”

“This studio means nothing to you? The joy in the work? This is a good life, Wilhelmina, infinitely better than what you would have … otherwise. You’re a fine selector, one of the best.”

“I’ll be a fine wife. It’s decided.”

She picked up a chipped chunk of amber glass and held it to her ring finger. “May I have this? Mr. Tiffany told me to look for beauty.”

“Take it. Take it. Maybe it will remind you of what you’ve left.”

I was stricken by her shortsighted decision. I imagined the narrow
steps to the cramped room she would share with Ned, a mere crevice between dingy, windowless walls without so much as room enough to swing her arms, the stairway leading only to the blind alleys of her life. I insisted on having her address even if it was temporary, and her aunt’s as well, so that I could keep track of her and send her something, which I did, two sets of towels, with a note wishing her well.

She responded a few weeks later to thank me and tell me that her butcher had a chance as a foreman at a Chicago slaughterhouse, so the wedding was put off for a while. I wrote her a note saying I would take her on again at the studio, even for a short time. I never heard back from her.

GLUM MR. BAINBRIDGE
, the portly actor with an expensive toupee well worn, I mean worn well, had written a play, and most of the boarders plus Edwin and George were going to see him perform in it.