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THE ARTS
Rubin, Susan Goldman

Dragonflies of Glass: The Story of Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls

48 pp. | Abrams | February, 2025 | Trade ISBN 9781419754364 $19.99 | Ebook ISBN 9781647002756 $17.99
(2) K-3 Illustrated by Susanna Chapman. This picture-book biography introduces Clara Driscoll (1861–1944), the unsung artist behind many iconic Tiffany stained-glass designs. Born in Ohio, Driscoll studied art in New York City and began working at the Tiffany Glass Company. Her passion and talent drew the attention of Mr. Tiffany himself, and he eventually put her in charge of the Women’s Glass Cutting department and its staff of “Tiffany Girls,” as Driscoll dubbed them. Rubin’s detailed text is as much about the exacting work of crafting leaded glass as it is about Driscoll’s unconventional position as a woman in late-nineteenth-century society. An all-woman team of glass cutters was highly unusual; even more remarkable for the time, Driscoll and her crew were paid the same as male workers. When the men threatened to strike if the women’s shop wasn’t closed (they had families to support; the women did not), “Mr. Tiffany stood up for the women.” Chapman’s movement-filled, eye-catching illustrations, “created with watercolor, gouache, cut paper, and a digital zhuzh,” keep the information lively and in-corporate excerpts from Driscoll’s letters home to her family. Author and illustrator notes, two archival photographs plus a photo of Driscoll’s famous wisteria lamp, where to find her artwork, a bibliography, and source notes are appended.
Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2025

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