Clara and Mr. Tiffany, by Susan Vreeland

Vreeland has once again taken a real-life artist and other historical figures and written an engrossing fictional account of their lives. Set in New York the fin-de-siecle era when the Victorian sensibility was giving way to Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement, the novel primarily focuses on Clara Driscoll, a glass artist working in Louis Comfort Tiffany's studios from the 1890's until the end of the first decade of the new century. Clara is in many ways a "new woman." Her husband's untimely death, which leaves her unexpectedly with no resources when it turns out he has a grown daughter she knew nothing about, leads her to go to work in the "Woman's" division of the Tiffany studios. Ultimately she becomes its manager. She develops a complex relationship with Tiffany, both as a collaborative artist and a man, as well as several other men in her rather racy boardinghouse. Tiffany's rule against employing married women often pits her desire for a settled married life against her almost compulsive need to create artistic beauty. Touching on such ideas as woman's right to work (and for equal pay), the plight of the immigrant, and the often unsung contributions of women artists, Vreeland attempts a broad canvas and is usually successful. The city of New York is, in a real sense, also a character in the novel. Clara probably did design many of the famous Tiffany lamps and lampshades and was the subject of what sounds like a fascinating exhibit the New York Historical Society entitled A new light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany girls. 405 pp.