NYC museum exhibit shines a light on Tiffany lamps' true creators

CBS News

12-03-2025

The creation of the Tiffany lamp was credited to a famous craftsman, but it wasn't until recently that the lamps' true creators were revealed – a group of artisans in New York City known as the "Tiffany Girls."
An exhibition inside at the New York Historical is shining a light on the lamps.
Letters discovered in 2005 illuminate truth behind Tiffany lamps
An icon of American design made at the turn of the 20th century, the Tiffany lamp is known for its opalescent glass.
"If you were able to own one of these lamps, the price of a car, in your living room, it really was a status symbol, but it also reflected your artistry, your taste," said Anna Danziger Halperin, director of the Center for Women's History. "It hasn't been painted. It's been created in a way to reflect these amazing differences in color and in texture."
The glassworks were credited to Louis Comfort Tiffany, but the 2005 discovery of century-old letters from a woman named Clara Driscoll illuminated the truth behind the designs.
"It was only through the discovery of her letters that we really understand that the creations were not made by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself, but by this team of women who came together and became known as the Tiffany Girls," said Helen Day, Richmond Hill Historical Society president.
"The Tiffany Girls" fictionalizes Queens history
Clara Driscoll led the artists in cutting and arranging patterns in glass at Tiffany Studios in Queens.
"They were all called 'girls,' shop girls and telegraph girls and telephone girls and the Tiffany girls because, in most places, it was illegal for married women to work outside the home. Now, this was 1900, not so long ago," author Shelley Noble said.
Noble weaves the lives of the women artisans into historical fiction in her novel "The Tiffany Girls."
"When Clara did her famous dragonfly lamp, she was out bicycling in Central Park and saw the dragonflies and how their wings caught the light," she said.
Today, a Tiffany lamp can sell for anywhere from thousands to millions of dollars at auction. But Noble sees deeper meaning in the glass – how choices made by a group of women left their mark on the future.
"Every one of us makes history," she said.
Corona's P.S. 110, the Tiffany School, now stands on the former site of Tiffany Studios.