Review by Booklist Review
Artist Louis Comfort Tiffany gave his name to the intricate stained glass lamps for which he is so celebrated, but they were actually designed and executed between 1888 and 1909 by Clara Driscoll and her allwomen team of artisans. This didn't come to light until 2005, when a trove of letters Clara wrote home to her mother and sisters about her work at Tiffany Studios was discovered in an attic. This picture-book biography showcases Driscoll's genius at creating stained glass lamps featuring motifs from nature, like dragonflies, cobwebs, wildflowers, and butterflies, even as her status as a woman prevented her from receiving credit for her work. The text follows Clara from her girlhood in Ohio, surrounded by gardens and fields--with the illustrations cleverly superimposing what became Clara's nature motifs of flowers and dragonflies on trees and bushes--through art school and, finally, to her work as chief lamp designer at Tiffany Studios. The steps involved from design through converting cut glass into art are depicted clearly throughout. 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. Can be paired with Susan Goldman Rubin's 2025 Dragonflies of Glass.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The studio of Louis Tiffany was renowned for its stained-glass objects, and this revealing story clarifies the role of designer Clara Driscoll (1861--1944) in creating the exquisite table lamps Tiffany was known for--a role that was not understood until after her death. Leaving her beloved childhood home and garden behind, Driscoll sought work in New York City and found employment at Tiffany's all-woman design studio, choosing among glass sheets "dappled and streaked, shaded and shimmering" to represent light and figures. Homesick, she began to design lamps based on natural forms, including her old garden's "yellow butterflies and wild primroses," then withstood her male colleagues' protests to make still more intricate creations. The lamps earned high prices, and the art world believed Tiffany had designed them until Driscoll's letters showed otherwise. Alongside delicate, design-oriented text by Nickel, Paschkis combines black outlines and luminous colors to make the pages glow like stained-glass itself. Background characters are largely pale-skinned. An author's note concludes. Ages 7--10. (June)
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Review by Horn Book Review
This picture-book biography of stained-glass artist Clara Driscoll (1861-1944) opens on a bucolic scene of the gardens and "the house on a hill" in Ohio where she grew up. In the foreground, apple blossoms, morning glories, daffodils, and a dragonfly foreshadow motifs in her iconic work -- work attributed to Louis Tiffany until years after Driscoll's death. That idyllic setting was never far from her mind after she moved to New York City and began working for Tiffany's stained-glass window company. Nickel follows the path of Driscoll's career from selecting and cutting glass for windows, to being put in charge of "a new workshop of women," to her innovative design for her butterfly-and-primrose lamp. Paschkis's luminous, 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 (e.g., she read nature poetry to her "Tiffany Girls" to inspire them). An author's note provides more information about Driscoll's life, her legacy, and the five design steps involved in producing her lamps; a selected biography and source notes are also appended. See Rubin's recent Dragonflies of Glass (rev. 5/25) for another portrait of this long-overlooked artist. Kitty FlynnJuly/August 2025 p.120 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
