[Image above] The Wisteria table lamp, designed by Clara Driscoll and produced in 1905–1906, was one of the most expensive and most popular lamps sold by Tiffany Studios at the time. Credit: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
October marks the end of the migration season for North American monarch butterflies, which fly south to California or Mexico, depending on where they breed. In the spring, they return to their breeding grounds, clocking up to 3,000 miles.
These incredible insects have become symbols of beauty and transformation throughout history, adorning various forms of artwork from ancient Greece to modern times. During the Victorian era, the butterfly motif expanded to fashion and home décor, which included embroidery, jewelry, and wallpaper designs.
Louis C. Tiffany, renowned for his stained-glass windows, also entered the home décor market during this period, when he added lamps to his line of products in 1895. Most of these lamps, which were often adorned with scenes from nature, including butterflies, were made between 1895 and 1920.
At the time, Tiffany lamps could sell for as much as $400, which is about $15,000 today. At auction, original Tiffany lamps now go for tens or hundreds of thousands to several millions of dollars. For instance, a rare Butterfly table lamp, circa 1900, sold in 2023 for more than $768,000. Even replicas of Butterfly lamps can fetch a hefty price.
Although Tiffany got credit for the lamps’ designs (company ads at the time depicted him as chief designer), it wasn’t until more than a century later that the real designer behind these lamps and other products became known: Clara Driscoll (1861–1944).
Driscoll was the head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department at Louis Tiffany’s company. In 2002, the book Tiffany Desk Treasures by George A. Kemeny and Donald Miller named Driscoll as the designer of Tiffany’s signature Dragonfly lampshade. She was also recognized as a significant contributor to Tiffany Glass.
In 2005, art historians discovered several hundred family letters written by Driscoll to her three younger sisters and their mother. Many of these letters chronicled daily life at Tiffany Studios, and they included Driscoll’s assertion that she designed several of the company’s most beloved lamps besides the Dragonfly, including the Wisteria, Butterfly, Fern, and Poppy models.
In today’s CTT, we help “eclose” Driscoll’s involvement in developing the famous Tiffany Butterfly lamp. We also shine a light on the contributions of the so-called Tiffany Girls who made these elegant glassworks possible.
Clara Driscoll: Artistic education and career at Tiffany Studios
Driscoll was born Clara Pierce Wolcott in Tallmadge, Ohio, on Dec. 15, 1861. She was the eldest daughter of Elizur V. Wolcott and Fannie Pierce.
Driscoll lost her father at the age of 12. Unusual for that time, she and her three younger sisters were encouraged to pursue a higher education.
Because Driscoll showed artistic talent, she attended the Western Reserve School of Design for Women (now the Cleveland Institute of Art). After working for a local furniture maker, she moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1888 with her sister Josephine and enrolled at the then-new Metropolitan Museum Art School. The two sisters were soon hired by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, which changed its name to Tiffany Studios in 1902.
Because only single women were allowed to work at Tiffany’s (most companies at the time also had this policy), Driscoll’s career at Tiffany’s was interrupted three times. In 1889, she married Francis S. Driscoll, who died only three years later. Driscoll then returned to Tiffany’s, where she became head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department.
In 1896, Driscoll became engaged to Edwin Waldo, leaving Tiffany once again. However, Waldo abruptly disappeared before the wedding could occur, so she returned to the company the following year. Driscoll eventually married again, in 1909, to one of her friends at the boarding house, Edward Booth, and left Tiffany Studios for good. She began painting silk scarves, but this effort never achieved the prominence of her work at Tiffany Studios.
Driscoll designed more than thirty lamps produced by Tiffany Studios during her several decade career. She won a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair for her Dragonfly lamp design. When her Wisteria table lamp was produced in 1905–1906, it was one of the most expensive and most popular lamps sold by Tiffany Studios at the time.
The letters that Driscoll sent to her family provide an insight into how she came up with these designs. For example, in a letter dated June 29, 1898, she describes her artistic process for the Butterfly lamp, making a “model of paper and linen so that Mr. Tiffany could see exactly what [her] idea was.” The letter also describes Driscoll telling him the design was inspired by a scene at her Ohio home of yellow butterflies swarming over a field of wild primroses. Driscoll wrote Tiffany loved the design and started scribbling more ideas; he finally told her “to work out your own design.”
Inside the Women’s Glass Cutting Department
Tiffany established the Women’s Glass Cutting Department in 1892 after opening his larger factory complex in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, N.Y. The glass cutting department specialized in selecting and cutting glass for windows, shades, and mosaics. This process involved several steps:
- Prospective designs were sketched on paper.
- Designs were translated into a cartoon, the working drawing used to create the final glasswork.
- The cartoon was sent to the factory where a shade was created out of plaster.
- Three sections of the designs were sketched onto the plaster shade.
- The sections were filled in with watercolor pencils to mimic glass.
- After Tiffany approved the design, a wooden mold of the shade was created, and it designated each of the specific pieces of glass that would eventually make up the shade.
- Each individual piece of glass on a cartoon was numbered to correspond with the mold.
- The small patterns were then laid out on a flat piece of glass and cut to fit the pattern.
- The wooden mold was sent to the factory where each individually cut section was fastened together with metal.
- The shade was electroplated with copper and then sent to the Tiffany Studios showroom.
As head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department, Driscoll coordinated work at the department with that at the Corona factory. So, she traveled to Queens to check on things several times a month.
Driscoll’s original staff of six women eventually grew to 35. In 1903, the all-male union of glassworkers threatened to strike if Tiffany didn’t shut down the women’s department. The compromise capped the number of women at 27, who were limited to making lampshades and other small luxury products.
Before this curtailing of duties, Driscoll and her staff received some recognition at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where Tiffany won 54 medals for designs of leaded glass windows and lamps, among others, including those by Clara Driscoll and Agnes Northrop, another Tiffany artist. A guide book from the exposition reads,
“In stained glass and glass mosaics, the most important work has been done by women. It will surprise many visitors to this exposition to see how much of the work done by large firms, such as the Tiffany Glass Company, is by women. This is a work that has not only its artistic but also its commercial side, and it is the commercial side that, after all, attests its worth to women since it demonstrates the value of their work as a livelihood, which is, after all, the important thing to women.”
Driscoll also received recognition from Louis Tiffany himself. According to this art gallery article, Driscoll and Louis Tiffany “seemed to share a sensitivity to color and texture and a love of nature. She expressed ‘unbounded admiration’ for him, and Tiffany praised her artistic sensibility.”

Clara Driscoll (far left) with the “Tiffany Girls” on the roof of Tiffany Studios, ca. 1904. Credit: The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art
Driscoll’s lasting legacy
Although it has been almost 80 years since Driscoll died on Nov. 6, 1944, we are fortunate that she and her artistic talent are still recognized today. Museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum feature Tiffany (or should we say Driscoll) table lamps in their permanent collections.
In November 2006, the New-York Historical Society’s exhibit “A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls” showcased the work of Clara and the women she oversaw. This exhibit was the result of three art historians’ research: Martin Eidelberg (professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University), Nina Gray (former curator at the New-York Historical Society who found some of Driscoll’s letters at Queens Historical Society) and Margaret K. Hofer (former curator of decorative arts, New-York Historical Society). The three historians’ exhibition catalog, A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, was published in 2007.
More recently, Driscoll has been celebrated in several novels (here, here, and here), a children’s book, and even a one-woman play. Tiffany/Driscoll lamps are still popular and reproductions can be found in a range of prices at places such as Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, and many art studios, as well as a German company utilizing the same patterns, mold sizes, and designs of the original lamps created by Tiffany Studios.
According to a Smithsonian article, “…many of these iconic Art Nouveau creations would never have existed in the first place without Clara Driscoll.” We are all fortunate that Louis Tiffany, through Tiffany Studios, provided Driscoll the perfect venue to let her artistic talents shine.
Want to learn more about the history of stained glass? Check out our three-part series on stained-glass windows that published on CTT in April 2024.
Additional resources
“A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll’s Letters” (New-York Historical Society, 2008)
“Curator Confidential: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls” (New-York Historical Society, 2020)
“The women of Tiffany Studios: Clara Wolcott Driscoll made visible” (Cleveland Museum of Art, 2020)
“These women were the real geniuses behind the iconic Tiffany lamps” (Smithsonian Magazine, 2024)
“The rediscovered artistry of Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls” (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 2022)
Author
Laurel Sheppard
CTT Categories
- Art & Archaeology