Clara Driscoll (Tiffany glass designer)

Clara Driscoll (December 15, 1861 – November 6, 1944) of Tallmadge, Ohio, was head of the Tiffany Studios Women's Glass Cutting Department (the "Tiffany Girls"), in New York City. Using patterns created from the original designs, these women selected and cut the glass to be used in the famous lamps. Driscoll designed more than thirty Tiffany lamps produced by Tiffany Studios, among them the Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony, and from all accounts her first — the Daffodil.

Virtually nothing was known about Driscoll until quite recently. It had always been thought that Louis Comfort Tiffany was the chief designer behind the greatest of the Tiffany leaded lamps.

Clara Driscoll was born Clara Pierce Wolcott on December 15, 1861, the eldest daughter of Elizur V. Wolcott and Fannie Pierce. She lost her father at the age of 12. Unusual for that time, she, along with her equally bright and motivated three younger sisters, was encouraged to pursue a higher education. Clara showed a flair for art, and after attending the Western Reserve School of Design for Women (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) and working for a local furniture maker, she moved to New York and enrolled at the then new Metropolitan Museum Art School.

Driscoll's artistic potential was apparent and she was hired by the famed Tiffany Studios in 1888. She worked there off an on, designing and directing the designs of lamps, mosaics, windows, and other decorative objects, for more than 20 years. Engaged or married women were not allowed to work at Tiffany's, so Driscoll had to leave because of her marriage in 1889. After Driscoll's first husband Francis Driscoll died in 1892, she returned to Tiffany's. She became engaged again in 1896- 1897, to Edwin Waldo, but he disappeared and no marriage occurred. She remained at Tiffany's until her marriage to Edward A. Booth in 1909, an event which ended her career at Tiffany. While at Tiffany's, Driscoll worked closely with a number of other "Tiffany Girls", including Alice Carmen Gouvy and Lillian Palmié.

All records for Tiffany Studios were lost after it closed in the early 1930s. It was only through the combined efforts of Martin Eidelberg (professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University), Nina Gray (another independent scholar and former curator at the New-York Historical Society), and Margaret K. Hofer (curator of decorative arts, New-York Historical Society), that the involvement of Clara Driscoll and other "Tiffany Girls" in designing Tiffany lamps was widely publicized. However, a book published in 2002 entitled Tiffany Desk Treasures, by George A. Kemeny and Donald Miller, had already named Clara Driscoll as the designer of Tiffany's signature Dragonfly lampshade, as well as a significant contributor to Tiffany Glass—four years before Eidelberg and Gray went public with their discovery in 2006. The book also cited Driscoll as being one of the highest-paid women of her time, earning $10,000 per year.

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