By Emma Staffaroni

This article is part of a three-story series exploring Chicago women’s history.

Back in 2007 the New-York Historical Society featured an exhibit called “A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls.” Louis Comfort Tiffany, the 19th century decorative arts genius who pioneered the use of stained glass and mosaic, was not a woman, but his glass workers were, and recent research out of the Queens Historical Society reveals that these women had a crucial role to play beyond manufacturing. Clara Driscoll of the exhibition’s title was the Director of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department at Tiffany Studios in New York. As the Director, she designed and crafted some of the most famous lamps attributed to Tiffany himself, including the Daffodil lamp, pictured below right.

Driscoll worked for Tiffany for twenty years, during which time she designed countless lamps, windows, and mosaics. She left her mark on Chicago history when she assisted with the Tiffany Dome in Marshall Field’s department store on State Street in Chicago in 1907. Using Tiffany’s 1894-patented “favrile iridescent glass,” she and her co-workers took the work they did on smaller windows and lamps to the next level with this massive project that would endure as a gem of Chicago architecture and Art Nouveau.

As women’s historians know, women’s history is more often than not “hidden in plain sight,” frequently over-shadowed by the name of a man or a male-controlled enterprise. Yet what is spectacular about Driscoll’s contributions to glass work is that her works are not hidden, but rather quite plainly and splendidly visible for Chicagoans to behold–both at the old Marshall Field’s, now Macy’s, and at the Chicago Cultural Center, once meant to be the public library. Now protected historic landmarks, Driscoll’s masterpieces will not be marginalized by the hegemonic male bias in curation practices. Rather than being stuffed away in a dusty Art Institute storage space, Driscoll’s architectural works–though doomed to be attributed to her boss, Tiffany–will not be forgotten.