Making Light Bloom: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Lamps [Hardcover]

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.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 revil*