Clara and Mr. Tiffany (32 page)

“I did the ink pot, and Lillian Palmié did the candlesticks.”

“Very good indeed. They fit in to my new direction.”

I felt myself stiffen. “With you, there’s always a new direction. You’re irrepressible. What do you have up your sleeve now?”

“Lalique got a lot of attention in Paris with his enamels. I’ve been experimenting with enamel too, on copper. Those pieces in which I used gold and silver foil under the enamel were well received. I’ve installed a larger enameling kiln in the factory than the one in my home studio, so now I’m ready to open a small enameling department. I want Miss Gouvy to be the head of it.”

I went cold to the lips. “She’ll be working—”

He didn’t look at me. “In Corona.”

The word shattered the elation in the air as though it were glass.

“Give me ten minutes and then send her down to my office. When she comes back, send the Palmié girl.”

“But Lillian has never done enameling.”

He turned on me a look one would give to an ignoramus. “She will learn. We are all continuing students of art.” His imperious tone cut me to the bone. “I saw some beautiful French ceramics too.”

“I’m sure you did.” And I’m sure he caught the sarcasm in my voice.

“Soon we’ll expand into ceramics. I want Miss Patricia Gay and Miss Lucy Lantrup for that.”

“You’re impoverishing my department!”

He raised his shoulders. “Hire more.”

ALICE AND I WALKED
home in a maelstrom of resentment.

“He didn’t give me a choice,” she fumed.

“He’s on top of the world now, and nothing is going to get in his way. He’s teeming with ideas. He wants to transcend himself with each new medium.”

“But he’s so authoritarian,” Alice said.

“Autocratic.”

“Self-important.”

“Self-consumed.”

“Vainglorious.”

“Omnivorous.”

“Obsessed.”

“Masterful.”

“Brilliant.”

“But flawed as a human being,” I said.

I wanted to scream or tear something to show that I felt ripped in two. Despite the truth of our character assassination, I adored him. He and I had a bridge that no one else traveled that made us artistic lovers, passionate without a touch of the flesh. He made me thrive, and valuing that, I could do nothing that would endanger it.

At dinner, Alice announced my award. I announced her new assignment. She played with her food and didn’t eat. In my room, I played with my kaleidoscope and watched the pieces crash.

H
ANK CAME BACK FROM PARIS EARLY IN SEPTEMBER SPORTING
a dragoon’s mustache.

“How were the reviews?” I asked at dinner, halfheartedly, wilted from the third day of blazing heat and astronomical humidity.

“He was hailed as a genius who could achieve unlimited effects in glass.”

“But did he achieve the Tiffany Imperative?” Bernard asked.

“I believe we can say he was a match for his father this time. I have to tell you, though, that he exhibited under his own name, not the company name.”

“Oh, you troublemaker!” Dudley said. “Did you have to bring that up?”

“The newspapers reported that the awards were won by Louis Comfort Tiffany, but as a journalist, I got hold of the jurists’ report. Your name was listed as designer of the dragonfly lamp.”

He handed it to me, and there I was. And Arthur Nash too. And Agnes.

“So he did have to divulge our names after all.”

“Not to the press.”

“Oh, no, never to the press. What would it have cost him to share one ounce of glory? What’s the point of winning an award if he keeps it a secret?”

Alice lowered her head, George pursed his lips, Merry clucked her tongue, and Bernard gave me a look filled with compassion, holding my frustration in his eyes until I looked away.

“A few critics weren’t entirely enthusiastic,” Hank admitted. “Maybe, Miss Lefevre, you could translate? I’ve marked the passage.”

“All my teaching, and you still—”

“To get it exact.”

“
D’accord.
”

“I don’t know this window,” I said. “It must have been made in the men’s department.”

“Here’s a mention in
International Studio
,” said Hank.

“Oh, he’s going to feel the sword behind that pen,” I said.

“It continues. ‘But no commercial considerations are allowed to stand in the way of the alert curiosity of the highly gifted artist who is the soul as well as the owner of the company.’ ”

“So long as Boss Mitchell and Boss Platt are gagged and locked in their offices at Tiffany Hall,” I said.

Alice grunted. Polite, feminine Alice definitely grunted.

There was no cooling off indoors, so after dinner some of us went up to the roof to catch any errant breeze, taking wet washcloths to dampen our necks as we sat on a long bench surrounded by chimneys and rooftop water tanks with their curious coolie-hat lids.

“Too hot to talk,” Mr. York said.

“Too hot to think,” said Dudley. “I’m sweating like a prostitute in church.”

In a stupor we waited until our rooms cooled off enough to sleep. One by one, the others ventured downstairs to try them out until only Bernard and I were left in the twilight.

“So winning the award means nothing to you?” he ventured to ask.

“It means a great deal to me, but exhibiting everything under his own name is wrong.”

“Even though your products are collaborative?”

“Granted, they all are, even across departments. The metalworkers, I mean. He can’t name all those who did some work on dragonfly, but everything we produce has a designer, and it’s not always Tiffany. That lamp was my concept from the beginning through every stage. If he didn’t want to name his designers publicly, then he should have used the company name on his pavilion.”

“And you’re hurt by this.”

“He called leaded-glass lampshades our secret from the first glimmer of the idea. At that moment it meant let’s just keep it to ourselves until the right time to develop them. Regardless of his intent, the result is that it remains a secret that he didn’t design that lamp. A secret that I exist.”

Minutes passed without a word, and I appreciated him at my side to absorb my resentment.

Eventually he said, “I grew up in Gloucester in southwest England. As a boy, I was enchanted by the stained-glass windows in our cathedral, never thinking I would ever come to know someone who made them. On rare sunny days, they sparkled like jewels, and spots of color danced over the floor and pews.”

“You thought that
then
?”

“I imagined that your lamps shoot out colors too, so I went to the showroom recently to have a look.”

“You were there when I was upstairs?”

“I had no right to disturb you.”

“What did you see?”

“The butterflies, the fish, and the dragonflies. Stunning, Clara. Your lamps will last through the ages, and will come to be valued as treasures
from our time, worth far more than you can imagine now. I know this. I’m an importer.”

Hearing that, I felt my spirit soar. I didn’t breathe until his velvet voice came through the semidarkness again.

“Someday, when women are considered equal to men, it will become known that a woman of great importance created those lamps. This isn’t the Middle Ages, Clara. You will not be lost to history like the makers of those medieval windows in Gloucester are. Someone will find you.”

Could that be? I drank in this comfort hungrily, momentarily released from the prison of resentment. I could not even find words to thank him, but after some moments of relishing what he said, sharp embarrassment descended. My need for recognition was as transparent to him as a pouting child’s. My complaints about Mr. Tiffany seemed petty after hearing Bernard paint a larger picture. At once I saw that I was too preoccupied with the present, and with myself. There was no grace in so nakedly reaching after fame. What would I have to do, or give up, in order to outgrow it?

“THE WISTERIA LAMP
is finished if you want to take a look,” the note said the next day. It was from Alex, the foreman of the Metal Department. If.
If
. What did he think I was? A turtle who lays her eggs and immediately abandons them to hatch and fend for themselves? I beat his messenger boy downstairs and arrived just as Alex was attaching the electric socket to the base.

My disheartened feelings melted away at the sight. I, we, had transformed glass and metal into an illusion of a living plant.

“It’s spectacular!”

The open crown for release of heat looked fine as a network of thick, textured leads in a patina of black representing the vines. Five of them snaked all the way down to the irregular bottom edge, diminishing in thickness to become the same width as the other lead lines dividing one column of blossoms from another.

“It was mighty troublesome to solder all those tiny pieces,” Alex said.

“It’s expertly done. With so many lead lines, they could have overpowered the shade if the solder was laid on too thickly.”

“You have Harry to thank for that.”

“You did a superb job, Harry,” I said. “I know it was difficult.”

“I hope I don’t see another one of those for a while,” he grumbled.

Alex set it on the base and lit it. The brilliance took my breath away. The blossoms sparkled as if a magical vine had produced amethysts and sapphires. I needed to linger over it, glory in it, share it.

“Can you send it up to fifth for a couple of days?”

“No. The boss wants it in his office for a client to see. Then it’s going to Paris.”

“Then just one day. I want the girls to study it.”

“Can’t do.”

Rage rose, swift and violent, even to my teeth. “But it’s mine!”

His stunned look made me think how false that was, how puny my claim. A dozen people, counting both of our departments and the bronze foundry, had worked on it.

“I’m sorry. An hour? Can you do without it for an hour?”

“An hour.”

“Harry, will you bring it up? I want you to hear what the girls say.”

When Harry delivered it on a cart, and I told the girls that he was the man who put it together, their praise came thick and fast and loud. Harry blushed his happiness. He never got any credit for anything.

“Let’s light it,” he said.

Everyone quieted. The room crackled with the electricity of suspense. When he turned it on, what squeals and cheers ensued. I thought even Frank could hear them.

Nellie marched right up to him, arm extended. “I want to shake your hand, Mister. I can’t imagine how happy a body would be to have that in his house and be able to turn it on whenever he wanted some light.”

“There will be more,” I said to the girls, but Harry heard it on his way out. His shoulders sagged and he looked cross-eyed in exaggerated despair, and the girls giggled.

“Now that you see how electricity illumines every piece, I want to talk about selection. None of the wisteria lamps we produce will be the same as this or as each other, although we’ll be using the same lead lines and patterns. The small size of the pieces lends itself to creating variations.”

I gave them the range of colors from white through pale cerulean to Prussian blue, and from mauve through the violet range to purple. The foliage could depict a specific time in the blooming season, using yellow-green and emerald for early spring, with olive and ocher for summer.

“There are two types of color schemes, so before you begin, you’ll have to make a choice. In one type, the petals are almost uniform in color, but the clusters contrast, light ones alternating with darker ones.”

“Do they both grow on the same vine?” Mary McVickar questioned.

“Not usually, but there could be more than one vine tangled together. The other scheme would follow a pattern of maturation, light tints higher on the cluster, descending to darker shades on the newer, lower blossoms.”

“What types of glass would you like us to use?” asked Minnie.

“Mottled glass could have darker spots on a lighter petal, which would provide a smooth transition down the column. Knobby glass, with the texture on the inside of the shade, would give the petals luster.”

“What about any background?” Miss Stoney asked.

“You are free to choose how much air you want showing between clusters, and the glass for the air might be transparent, or active with striations, ripples, pinpoint mottling, or blue streaks.”