Clara and Mr. Tiffany (2 page)

Astonishing how he could get mere watercolors so deep and saturated, so like lacquer that they vibrated together as surely as chords of a great church pipe organ. Even the names of the hues bore an exotic richness. The peacocks’ necks in emerald green and sapphire blue. The tail feathers in vermilion, Spanish ocher, Florida gold. The jewels in the crown mandarin yellow and peridot. The background in turquoise and cobalt. Oh, to get my hands on those gorgeous hues. To feel the coolness of the blue glass, like solid pieces of the sea. To chip the gigantic jewels for the crown so they would sparkle and send out shafts of light. To forget everything but the glass before me and make of it something resplendent.

When I could trust my voice not to show too much eagerness, I said, “I see your originality is in good health. Only you would put peacocks in a chapel.”

“Don’t you know?” he said in a spoof of incredulity. “They symbolized eternal life in Byzantine art. Their flesh was thought to be incorruptible.”

“What a lucky find for you, that convenient tidbit of information.”

He chuckled, so I was on safe ground.

He tossed down more drawings. “A marble-and-mosaic altar surrounded by mosaic columns, and a baptismal font of opaque leaded glass and mosaic.”

“This dome is the lid of the basin? In opaque leaded glass?”

He looked at it with nothing short of love, and showed me its size with outstretched arms as though he were hugging the thing.

I was struck by a tantalizing idea. “Imagine it reduced in size and made of translucent glass instead. Once you figure how to secure the
pieces in a dome, that could be the method and the shape of a lampshade. A wraparound window of, say”—I looked around the room—“peacock feathers.”

He jerked his head up with a startled expression, the idea dawning on him as if it were his own.

“Lampshades in leaded glass,” he said in wonder, his blue eyes sparking.

“Just think where that could go,” I whispered.

“I am. I am!” He tugged at his beard. “It’s brilliant! An entirely new product. We’ll be the first on the market. And not just peacock featherth. Flowerth too!”

Excitement overtook his struggle to control his lisp, which surfaced only when he spoke with passion.

“But the chapel first. This will be our secret for now.”

Men harboring secrets—I seemed attracted to them unwittingly.

“Besides the window department and the mosaic department, I have six women working on the chapel windows. I’ve always thought that women have greater sensitivity to nuances of color than men do. You’ve proved that yourself, so I want more women. You’ll be in charge of them.”

“That will suit me just fine.”

“
Y
OU HAVE TO LOVE IT ENOUGH TO FORGO AND FORGET ALL OTHER
loves,” I told her. “Including men, Wilhelmina.”

Women around us cutting glass or drawing or painting in the women’s studio on the fifth floor lifted their heads at this truth, sizing her up.

“If you’re not willing to, go right out the door you came in, and look for other work.”

“I’m willing.” Her tone carried impatience as surely as mine carried brusqueness.

“All right, then.” I gave her a steel cutting wheel and a four-inch scrap of glass, and showed her how to score it.

“Don’t be afraid. Press firmly,” I said. “You have to be in command of the glass, telling it where to release its hold on itself. Just like life. Otherwise it will splinter.”

“It’s none too easy the first time, Mrs. Driscoll,” said Wilhelmina.

“You can call me Clara.”

I had found this flaxen-haired, broad-shouldered, bosomy Swede at the YWCA, where she was taking the free art classes. Despite her arms like a stevedore’s and her imposing six-foot stature, she was only seventeen years old.

Wilhelmina scored the glass against a straight edge.

“Now tap it gently.”

She tapped it over the edge of the table, and the released piece fell to the floor and broke. “Cripes!”

“Make sure your hand is under it to grab it. This is only practice, but once you start, broken pieces will be charged against your wage.”

“Too many broke ones, and I’d be paying you. What kind of a job is that?”

Agnes Northrop cleared her ticklish throat at that and aimed a judgmental look not at Wilhelmina but at me.

The two other girls I had just hired came through the door together—maybe they would please her more—Mary McVickar, eighteen, red-haired, freckle-faced, and full of bright anticipation, and Cornelia Arnoth, a few years older, quieter, more serious, as though she were carrying a burden. Cornelia had asked if the job would be permanent, and I had replied that it would be, though I wasn’t at all sure of what would happen after the fair. Both had been recommended by my former teacher at the Metropolitan Museum School.

I’d already interrogated them the same way I had done with Wilhelmina, warning them that Mr. Tiffany had a policy against having married women working for him. When they pledged their commitment to work over love, I walked them around the workroom among sawhorse tables and high stools, tall wooden easels for the enlarged drawings, and clear glass easels for glass selection, introducing the new girls along the way to the six original women in the department and the three I had hired a week earlier. I showed them where the tools were kept—watercolor sets, brushes, india ink, pens, drawing pencils, grease pencils, copper pattern shears, paper shears, three-bladed shears, scoring wheels, glass nippers, files, needle-nose pliers, small hammers, and chisels.

I introduced Agnes as Miss Northrop and explained that she was expanding a small painting of birds on a branch to a full-size watercolor of the window, called a cartoon.

“Cartoon? Like the funny picture of your Uncle Samuel in the red striped trousers and high hat?” Wilhelmina asked.

“No. The term is much older than that. When Michelangelo enlarged a drawing for a fresco to the size it would eventually be, that was called a cartoon.”

I told them that Agnes would decide where to draw in lead lines to indicate the separate pieces of glass, and that Mr. Tiffany’s own style was to have the lead lines follow the shapes in the design wherever possible.

“The birds are good,” Wilhelmina said. “They’re parakeets.”

I was amused that she thought of herself as qualified to critique it. Agnes sent me another loaded look, this one insinuating
Who does she think she is?

“Over here, Edith Mitchill is working on a finished cartoon, which has two sheets of paper under it with carbon paper in between each. She is going over all the lead lines with a pointed stylus to transfer the design to the two sheets beneath it, which will only show the outline of each individual shape, not the shadings. Mary, this outlining will be your first task.”

I lifted the corner of the cartoon to reveal the carbon copies.

“It’s a bloomin’ jigsaw puzzle,” said Mary.

I walked them over to another cartoon on an easel, which would be their first assignment. “It’s called
Feeding the Flamingoes
.”

Wilhelmina snickered. “Who painted it?”

“Mr. Tiffany. It’s for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, so it’s very important to him.”

“It’s silly,” Wilhelmina blurted. “Flamingoes don’t eat out of a person’s hand.”

“How do you know?” asked Mary.

“Just look at their beaks. Anyone can see that they’re made to scoop up food upside down in the water. We painted birds from a book at the YWCA. Holding out her hand like that, this lady doesn’t know the first thing about feeding a flamingo. You expect me to work on something that’s wrong?”

Agnes pressed her lips together in a tight line like a disapproving schoolmarm. It threatened to dampen my joy in teaching the new girls, which was exactly what she intended.

I liked Wilhelmina for speaking her mind, if she didn’t do it too often or too loud.

“I suppose artists call this a caprice,” I said. “It’s something Mr. Tiffany imagined. The fountain and the columns suggest a Roman villa.”

“What’s that circle?” Wilhelmina asked.

“A fishbowl. Two pieces of glass were made specially for it. The front layer is turquoise and green ripple glass, and the back layer has a swish of orange for the goldfish. We call that plating. Sometimes we use
as many as four or five layers to get the depth and color we want. Just wait. It will be gorgeous.”

Curiously, I felt I had to defend Mr. Tiffany despite having teased him in private about this window. “Peacocks aren’t enough for you?” I had said. “You need flamingoes in the chapel too? Are you collecting a Noah’s Ark? How about a pair of ostriches? Kangaroos?” It was good for him to be teased once in a while. In his domain, where his word was law, nobody else dared to.

Now I told Mary to number the individual sections, left to right.

“If a body can count that high,” she said.

“This one only has several hundred pieces because they’re large, but some windows have thousands of smaller ones. When she’s finished, Cornelia, you will cut up the first copy into its sections using these special scissors with three blades.”

I showed the girls how the lower blade fit between the two upper parallel blades to remove a one-sixteenth-inch strip, which would create space for the lead strips that hold the pieces of glass together.

“It looks hard with those big scissors,” Cornelia said.

“You’ll get used to them.”

I told her to leave the cutting of the woman’s profile, her hand, and the birds’ necks to me, and to practice drawing some curves on stiff paper and cutting them, keeping the drawn lines evenly visible in the channel between the two upper blades.

“While she’s doing that, Wilhelmina, since you’re tall, you’ll paste the other copy of the cartoon to the back side of this big sheet of clear glass in a frame, which we call an easel. You’ll paint those lines on the glass using a fine-tipped brush and black paint. Then you’ll remove the paper backing.

“Cornelia, you will put a dot of this wax on the back of each of the numbered sections, which we call pattern pieces, and Wilhelmina, you attach them to the clear glass in their exact positions that you painted. Then your jobs are finished and the window will be ready for the glass selector, who will choose glass in the colors and shadings and textures needed to convey the subject. The colors could be transparent, opaque, or in between. We call glass that transmits light but is not clear opalescent.”

“How will we ever do the lady’s face?” Worry wormed its way across Cornelia’s forehead. Oh, she was so deadly serious.

“Mr. Tiffany will do that with enamel paint. The figure’s hand too. It’s his only concession to medieval stained-glass craftsmanship of painting on glass with powdered enamels and then firing the pieces.” I explained that we avoid enameling whenever possible because it cuts out some of the light.

They were sweet girls, excited but anxious, especially Cornelia. I would have to guard against her overly intense desire to please. It would limit her originality.

“Soon these steps will be second nature to you.”

I heard the Tiffany tap, his malachite-tipped cane striking the wooden floor with authority. It was a blatant affectation. He was only in his early forties. The reddish brown hair in his beard struggling to hold its own against the onslaught of premature gray still had some years left. He didn’t need a cane any more than I did. He just used it to create a mystique about himself. Right behind him was Mr. Henry Belknap, slick and tidy.

Mr. Tiffany set a vase of hothouse irises on a worktable and tapped his cane lightly, three times. All except Agnes Northrop looked up in unison, like birds alerted to some potential danger, poised to fly. With her customary mien of a prima donna, Agnes remained seated on her stool as though exempt, barely turning toward Mr. Tiffany. Since she was his first female glass artist, she fancied herself a favorite.

“Good afternoon, ladies. You’re doing beautiful work.” He turned one iris to face Agnes. “Have I ever told you how important it is to have beauty in our lives?”

“Not less than a hundred times,” Agnes said, studying the painting she was enlarging.

“Why, I don’t believe you, Miss Northrop.” His tone of mock disbelief revealed his playful side, which I loved. Addressing the new girls, he said, “I want to welcome you to Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company and introduce you to Mr. Belknap, the artistic director who will consult with Mrs. Driscoll in my absence. She has chosen you with great care because you will be involved in a stupendous undertaking.”

Here it comes. One of his declamations. The peacock spreading his tail feathers.

“The World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago commemorates Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World in 1492, four hundred years ago, though it won’t actually open until next year. This fair will be the greatest event in the history of our country since the Civil War, and you will be my contributing partners.”

Pure bluster. He didn’t need this to set the girls at awe. His art itself would do that. His comparison of the fair, an event likely to be wonderful, with an event so devastating and tragic was insensitive to the gravity of the war. Sometimes his inflated style tripped him up.