Clara Driscoll: Vitreous Painting on Glass

Clara Driscoll, Vitreous Painting on Glass, 8 x 10"

Clara Driscoll (1861–1944) of Tallmadge, Ohio was director of the Tiffany Studios' Women's Glass Cutting Department (the "Tiffany Girls"), in New York City. They chose the colors and type of glass to be used in the studios' famous glass items. Before her arrival the lamps had a static and geometric look and feel. As the creative force behind the Tiffany lamp she was director, designer and crafter of the more than thirty Tiffany lamps produced by the company; among them the famous Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony, and from all accounts her first, the Daffodil.

Virtually nothing was known about Driscoll until quite recently. It had always been thought that Louis Comfort Tiffany was the chief designer behind the greatest of the Tiffany leaded lamps. It was Clara Driscoll and the "Tiffany Girls" who had created many of the Tiffany lamps originally attributed to Louis Comfort Tiffany and his staff of male designers. Meaningless on their own, when put in order they bring to life an exquisite object, just as the show itself, a puzzle now assembled, illuminates the talented women who had long stood in the shadow of a celebrated man.

The book A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls by Margi Hofer, Martin Eidelberg, and Nina Gray was published in 2007. It "presents celebrated works of Tiffany Studios in an entirely new context, focusing on the women who labored behind the scenes to create the masterpieces now inextricably linked to the Tiffany name.

Anni Albers: Vitreous Painting on Glass

Anni Albers, Vitreous Painting on Glass, 8 x 10"

Anni (Fleischmann) Albers (June 12, 1899 – May 9, 1994)[1] was a German-American textile artist and printmaker. She is perhaps the best known textile artist of the 20th century.

Albers was born Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann in Berlin. Her mother was from an aristocratic family in the publishing industry and her father was a furniture-maker. Even in her childhood, she was intrigued by art and the visual world. She painted during her youth and studied under an impressionist from 1916 to 1919, but was very discouraged from continuing after a meeting with artist Oskar Kokoschka, who upon seeing a portrait of hers asked her sharply "Why do you paint?" She eventually decided to attend art school, even though the challenges for art students were often great and the living conditions harsh.

At Walter Gropius's Bauhaus she began her first year under Georg Muche and then Johannes Itten. Women were barred from certain disciplines taught at the school, especially architecture, and during her second year, unable to get into a glass workshop with future husband Josef Albers, Anni Albers deferred reluctantly to weaving. With her instructor Gunta Stölzl, however, Albers soon learned to love weaving's tactile construction challenges.

The Bauhaus at Dessau was closed in 1932 under pressure from the Nazi party and moved briefly to Berlin, permanently closing a year later in August 1933. The Albers were invited by Philip Johnson to teach at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina, arriving stateside in November 1933. Both taught at Black Mountain until 1949.

Albers worked primarily in textiles and, late in life, as a printmaker. She produced numerous designs in ink washes for her textiles, and occasionally experimented with jewelry. Her woven works include many wall hangings, curtains and bedspreads, mounted "pictorial" images, and mass-produced yard material. Her weavings are often constructed of both traditional and industrial materials, not hesitating to combine jute, paper, and cellophane, for instance, to startlingly sublime effect.

Eva Zeisel: Vitreous Painting on Glass

Eva Zeisel, Vitreous Painting on glass, 8 x 10"

Ceramics designer Eva Zeisel (1906-2011) began a prolific career in her late teens and continued to create innovative pieces into the 21st century. She was born in Budapest and pursued a career in painting, studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, but left in search of a more craft-oriented trade. She was apprenticed to a ceramist and soon became one of the first female journeyman potters, holding positions at the Kispester factory, in Schramberg and for Christian Carstens Kommerz. Her work from this period-- tea sets, bowls, vases, and dinnerware-- reflect a style influenced largely by the geometry of the Bauhaus and by the abstract shapes of sculptor Hans Arp. The pieces possess Zeisel's innate understanding of how ceramics work as an ensemble and how they can set the tone of a space.

In 1932 Zeisel moved to Russia, drawn by the folk art and the peasant customs that still thrived there. She worked at factories in the Ukraine, the Lomonosov Factory in Leningrad and the Dulevo factory near Moscow, at that time one of the biggest ceramics factories in world. After working her way up to art director of the China and Glass Industry of the Russian Republic, she was forced to leave by the increasingly hostile attitudes towards foreigners. In 1938 she moved to England to escape the Nazi occupation of Austria, and married sociologist Hans Zeisel. The couple immigrated to the United States in late 1938. One of Zeisel's first commissions in America was designing giftware for the Bay Ridge Specialty Company. When she started teaching at Pratt in 1939, a position she held until 1953, she arranged an innovative apprenticeship for her students through Bay Ridge, offering them a unique opportunity to gain professional experience. She received a great deal of acclaim for this system and often included her students' work in commissions, like the 1942 "Stratoware" dinnerware for Sears Roebuck.

In 1942, after the MoMA's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings exhibit, the Castleton Company asked the museum to find a ceramist who could show a series that would define a new era of modern china. Zeisel was chosen, and her 1946 "Museum" series was unveiled at a solo show called "Modern China by Eva Zeisel." She wrote that for the show she, "gave all the pieces an erect, uplifted look, as if they were growing up from the table." Going so far as to consult Emily Post's guide to setting a table, Zeisel created an elegant, all-white service with subtle curves that hinted at her forthcoming biomorphic work. She followed this high profile line with the colorful, and playful, 1946 "Town and Country" dinnerware for Red Wing Pottery. The popular series, recently reissued, featured bulbous, cartoon-like handles and bases executed as a modern and unique set. Another acclaimed series was the "Tomorrow's Classic" for Charles Seliger, with applied decorative patterns born out of a deal between the Commercial Decal Company and Hall China. She also designed a 1950's tubular steel chair with a plastic, zippered cover, and experimental ceramic wall dividers for Mancioli pottery in Italy, which were never produced. Zeisel retired from mass-produced commercial design in the mid 1960s. She kept creating her own work, however, and retraced her formative European years in the 1980s on a NEA fellowship. Some of her many recent honors include being named an Honorary Royal Designer by the Royal Designers for Industry, London (2004), receiving an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design (2005), and receiving the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005).