Making Light Bloom: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Lamps

by Sandra Nickel, Julie Paschkis (Illustrator)

Overview

The untold story of Clara Driscoll, a nature lover with the mind of a creative innovator and the unsung genius who designed and engineered the iconic Tiffany lamp

Drawing inspiration from her childhood gardens, Clara Driscoll created designs for Louis C. Tiffany's stained glass windows. Clara had such a flare for glass that Tiffany put her in charge of a special workroom, staffed with women—called the Tiffany Girls. But Clara wanted more. She wanted to create a three-dimensional work that would make light bloom. So she figured out how to engineer a lamp—how to shape and bend glass and light it so that her designs sprung to colorful, vivid life.

Today, we all recognize Tiffany lamps, but we almost forgot the woman who created them. Extensive back matter features more information about Clara Driscoll, her letters, and her design and manufacturing process, as well as bibliography and sources.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682636091
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	06/24/2025
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Sandra Nickel is an award-winning author of picture books. She is honored to be the winner of a Christopher Award, the winner of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators Crystal Kite Award, a finalist for the Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction for Younger Readers, a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection honoree, and a Charlotte Huck Award Recommended author. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults and has presented workshops on writing for children and young adults throughout the United States and Europe.

Julie Paschkis is an award-winning illustrator of more than 25 books for children. A graduate of Cornell University and the School for American Craftsmen at RIT, she taught art to grade school children for a number of years before turning her full attention to painting, textile design, and creating illustrations for her books.

Editorial Reviews

Alongside delicate, design-oriented text by Nickel, Paschkis combines black outlines and luminous colors to make the pages glow like stained-glass itself.

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The illustrations, drawn with india ink and then painted with gouache, marvelously mimic the motifs, shapes, and heavy black outlines of the stained glass. A terrific blend of art and social history set in an absorbing biography about an unacknowledged genius.
—Booklist (starred review)

Paschkis’sluminous, cheerful illustrations, rendered in pen-and-ink and gouache, appropriately resemble stained glass with their thick black lines, geometric shapes, and bright, rich colors with “dappled and streaked” effects. The engaging text provides an accessible overview of the labor-intensive stained glass–making process and insight into Driscoll as a person.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

Paschkis’ folk-style illustrations powerfully evoke the puzzlelike shapes of Tiffany windows, with vibrant colors set inside thick black lines. . . . An evocative look at one woman’s gift for channeling her love of nature into art.
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2025-03-22
The female artist behind Louis Comfort Tiffany’s iconic lamps went unacknowledged for years.

Until Clara Driscoll’s letters to her family were found, no one knew that she was responsible for these creations. After studying art and design, Clara moved from her Ohio farm to New York City and was hired by glassmaker Louis Comfort Tiffany to work on his stained glass windows. He liked her “flair for glass” and put her in charge of the “Tiffany Girls,” a workshop of women artists, to whom she sometimes read nature poetry. She began designing lamps inspired by butterflies, flowers, and eventually dragonflies, with their lacy wings illuminated by lamplight. Louis liked the dragonfly lamp so much that he sent it to the World’s Fair in Paris, where it won a bronze medal. Clara was meticulous in her study of nature, “even pinning flowers upside down to discover how they fell,” which led to her famous wisteria lamp, with its “two thousand petals cascading from branches.” Paschkis’ folk-style illustrations powerfully evoke the puzzlelike shapes of Tiffany windows, with vibrant colors set inside thick black lines. A helpful author’s note details Clara’s artistic process for each lamp, which included making five designs (beginning with a watercolor rendition), carving the design into a wooden mold, and then cutting the pieces into glass.

An evocative look at one woman’s gift for channeling her love of nature into art. (more information on Tiffany lamps, a note about Clara’s letters, bibliography, sources for quotes)(Picture-book biography. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews