Clara and Mr Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

Against the unforgettable backdrop of New York near the turn of the twentieth century, from the Gilded Age world of formal balls and opera to the immigrant poverty of the Lower East Side, bestselling author Susan Vreeland again breathes life into a work of art in this extraordinary novel, which brings a woman once lost in the shadows into vivid color.


It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows, which he hopes will honor his family business and earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women’s division. Publicly unrecognized by Tiffany, Clara conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which he is long remembered.


Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman, which ultimately force her to protest against the company she has worked so hard to cultivate. She also yearns for love and companionship, and is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who enforces to a strict policy: he does not hire married women, and any who do marry while under his employ must resign immediately. Eventually, like many women, Clara must decide what makes her happiest—the professional world of her hands or the personal world of her heart.

Clara Driscoll is not a name that most of us would recognise. Talk about Tiffany's and their lamps we would likely be much more familiar, and yet the two have now been inextricably linked through the discovery of some letters from Driscoll. Vreeland has taken what little we know about Clara and shaped a story that is filled with fascinating details about not only Clara but also about glass-making, selection of colours and the creation of many beautiful objects of art.

Clara is the central character in this book which is not only about how the iconic lamps came into being, but also about life in New York at the turn of the century and social change. There are plenty of historic milestones that are touched on, including the first time that the ball dropped at Times Square on New Year's Eve, the building of the Flatiron Building and the opening of the underground train systems amongst others.

The book opens with the recently widowed Clara Driscoll returning to work for Louis Comfort Tiffany. She had worked for him previously, but he has a very strict policy that none of the women that work for him can be married, no matter who they are, what role they perform - no exceptions.

Whilst Clara chafes a little at the injustice of this rule, she is aware that very few of the other glass makers actually employ women at all, and she is so relieved to be back at work, she is prepared to work under those restrictions.

Gradually Clara is able to pick and choose the girls who will make up her team, many of them young immigrant girls, and they are set to work on many of the challenging designs that Mr Tiffany wants whether to fulfil orders for customers or for the various big exhibitions including the Chicago World Fair.

Image from Wikipedia

Along the journey, Mr Tiffany encourages Clara in many of her designs, despite the impediments that many of the money men of the company put in her way. What he doesn't do though, is openly acknowledge his designers, not only Clara, but the others as well. This lack of recognition is something that she struggles with because whilst she does want that, she also loves her job, loves designing, and loves the process of making the complicated glass pieces. There are also challenges with the men who work for Mr Tiffany. The women are not allowed to join the union, and there are times when the men seek to stop the women from "taking their jobs".

Outside of work, Clara lives in a share house with many other artistic types and so we get a glimpse inside the lives of these people. Through them, she meets the men who shape her personal life. There is Edwin who will in time become her fiance as well as Bernard who plays an important role in her life. All the time though, the men in her life have to compete with her passion for her work.

There are times at the beginning of the book where the technical details of the production is a bit overwhelming, but once you get past that initial part, the story just flows. This isn't the first Vreeland I have read, and like the others, the author shows considerable skill in bringing the colours and images to life within the text.

On page 229, one of Clara's friends says the following;

"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 makes of those medieval windows in Gloucester are. Someone will find you."

In the author note, Vreeland talks about the exhibition that she went to see that inspired her to write about Clara. You can't help but feel that this book is another step in finding Clara Driscoll.

Rating 4/5

Tour details:

Tour schedule
Clara and Mr. Tiffany on Amazon.com:
Read an excerpt of the book at Random House Readers Circle:
Susan's website: http://www.svreeland.com/
Susan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/susanvreeland

Cross posted at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader


Edited to add: We are giving away a copy of this book! Head over to read Susan Vreeland's guest post and  comment for your chance to win!

Susan Vreeland on Why I Love to Write Fiction About Art (includes giveaway)

Art as My Muse

Art provides me with rich opportunities for expression, for plots, for sojourns into history, for development of characters. I'm exhilarated whenever I describe a painting or its effects because it enables me to participate in the art world. Studying paintings has increased my powers of observation of the appearance, color, and shape of things so that my written descriptions can be more precise and vivid.

I have a philosophical reason for writing about art: its effect on the imagination. Thanks to art, instead of seeing only one world one time period, our own, we can experience other times, other cultures which offer a window to other lives. Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race. When there is no imagination of others' lives, there's little chance for human connection. Lacking that, compassion doesn't develop. Without compassion, then community, commitment, kindness all shrivel. Individuals can become isolated, the isolated can turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the form of civil and international violence. Art and history, combined into literature, are antidotes to that.

There is a name for what I do: ekphrasis, a Greek term meaning the use of one art form to describe or interpret something created in another art form. It's as old as Greek sculpture and pottery depicting myths.

The ekphrastic writer can use an artwork as a metaphor to enrich the text. For example, in my story "The Yellow Jacket," (Life Studies) the young Armand models for van Gogh in his studio. When he sees the painter's "Café Terrace on the place du Forum" with its swirling, diamond-like stars, he is reminded of the sparkles in Jacqueline's eyes. He knows that there are more stars beyond the edge of the canvas, and we complete the analogy that there will be more women in Armand's life than Jacqueline whom we know he will lose. Yellow light pours out of the café in the painting, and we hope that he recognizes its hopeful import.

In Luncheon of the Boating Party, ekphrasis allowed me to deliver an elaborate narrative surrounding a moment painted by Renoir, fourteen people enjoying each other on a terrace overlooking the Seine. Researching his models, his very real friends, I was able to use them as characters to narrate events in their lives--an elopement, an episode backstage at the Folies Bergère, a duel, a crisis among the Impressionists, a confession, a rivalry between two women for Renoir's affection, a feminist demand for equality. This allowed the novel to illuminate the vibrant, fast-changing world and mores of late nineteenth-century Paris which readers could more easily grasp by virtue of the painting.

In a similar fashion, in Clara and Mr. Tiffany, about the women who created the famous Tiffany leaded-glass lamps, I was able to depict the vast social difference between the Gilded Age of uptown Manhattan and the flood of immigrants into the Lower East Side. I saw the lamps as a bridge between poverty and tenement living and the rich industrialist families who purchased the lamps. Thus, those lamps have become an icon of an important moment in New York history.

In Life Studies, "Of These Stones," expands the historically true event of boys throwing stones at Cézanne and his work. It explores the issue of hypocritical religious extremism gripping an older brother and making him cruel to his contrite younger brother who, through seeing Cézanne's landscapes and fruit, grasps what Cézanne told him, that he painted to express "the spectacle God spreads before our eyes" and "to receive the Father's blessing." What the younger brother experiences is the power of art to heal.

In my story "The Things He Didn't Know," a construction worker in an art museum sees "Three Marys Grieving the Loss of their Lord," and notices in one of the Marys seems to be longing for something she couldn't have. He says, "This one loved him differently. This one knew all along he wouldn't be there. He'd be gone." It helps him to get over the loss of a girlfriend not right for him.

"A Flower for Ginette" illustrates a deepening moral sense. Monet's gardener steals a scrap of a water lily painting that Monet intended for burning, and gives it to his wife. Later realizing that Monet had a right to choose what remained of his work, the gardener prays that "God would not let him stumble and break a leg and die in the dirt track, would not let his heart stop beating before he could get home to build a little fire of kindling in the grate and place on it the slice [of painting]."

My writing is full of epiphanies experienced before works of art. I'm grateful to have discovered such a generous muse.

Useful Links:

Tour Schedule - http://tlcbooktours.com/2012/03/susan-vreeland-author-of-clara-and-mr-tiffany-on-tour-mayjune-2012/

Read an excerpt of the book at Random House Readers Circle:
http://www.scribd.com/RHPG/d/47185618-Read-an-Excerpt-from-Clara-and-Mr-Tiffany-by-Susan-Vreeland

Susan's website: http://www.svreeland.com/

Susan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/susanvreeland


Giveaway details:

- to participate, just leave a comment including your email address

- one entry per household

- open to US/Canada only

- closes 20th May midnight GMT

The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland

From extraordinary highs - patronage by the Medicis, friendship with
Galileo and, most importantly of all, beautiful and outstandingly original
paintings - to rape by her father's colleague, torture by the Inquisition,
life-long struggles for acceptance by the artistic Establishment, and betrayal
by the men she loved, Artemisia was a bold and brilliant woman who lived as she
wanted, and paid a high price. Now Susan Vreeland, author of the acclaimed GIRL
IN HYACINTH BLUE, brings her story to passionate and vivid life.

I had no expectations when I started this The Passion of Artemisia as I had never heard of Artemisia Gentileschi nor had read Susan Vreeland. I had heard of Vreeland though and I did a bit of research on Artemisia’s story before I started.

Artemisia, a 17th century painter, is still a young woman when she is faced with a terrible ordeal. After being secretly raped for about a year by a friend of the family and fellow painter her father finds out and decides to bring the man to justice. For Artemisia this is the ruin of her reputation as few people believe she didn’t “ask for it” and it’s almost the end of her as a painter because to prove that she tells the truth she is submitted to torture that seriously damages her hands.
Artemisia feels terribly betrayed by her father when he eventually drops the charges against the man who raped her and, after he arranges for her wedding with another, she leaves Rome with her new husband.

Settled in Florence both Artemisia and her husband devote themselves to painting. She paints heroic, strong women instead of the submissive females those times were used to. She paints in canvas the pain and anger she felt with her own situation. She soon becomes better known than her husband and manages to get better commissions which puts a strain in their relationship that, along with his infidelities, will lead her to leave him when she is offered work in elsewhere.

We follow Artemisia’s life as she travels from one work and city to another and we appreciate with her the finest artistic works at the same time that we follow some of the most interesting figures of the time. Although a fictitious account it makes for an engrossing read on creativity, how a lifetime of experiences can change your view of the world and on the relationship between artists and patrons at the time.

Artemisia is the first woman to be accepted in the Academy of Drawing of Florence and after reading this book I felt compelled to look at some of her paintings. I was not disappointed. Although the book does not portray her life as accurately as one might wish, and it does show a definite feminist influence, it makes for an interesting read.

Grade: 4/5