Tiffany Girl Read online

  Still cradling her cheek, Flossie ignored the tears spilling onto her fingers. “Crystal clear.”

  Turning, she fled from the room and up the stairs. Flinging herself onto her bed, she buried her face into her pillow and sobbed. Not just for herself, but for her mother and all the other women who didn’t see that men—even the ones who loved them—were very careful to keep the fair sex in a state of subjection and complete subservience.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Flossie squinted her eyes, blurring the woman at the front of the room to nothing but shadows, highlights, and midtones. The model was young and sat extremely still in a stout oak armchair, her ankles crossed, her hands folded atop her lap. Her simple green gown and white lacy collar offered a wonderful contrast to her rich, dark hair.

  Swishing her brush in turpentine, Flossie glanced at the other art students, some of them men, most of them women. They’d covered their clothing with paint-smudged smocks and worked quietly while the instructor, a master whose paintings were sold in galleries all over New York, circulated throughout the room and offered quiet suggestions.

  She dabbed her brush on a rag, then picked up some sapphire blue from her palette and mixed it with crimson. She still couldn’t believe Papa wasn’t going to allow her to return after the new year. She’d secretly hoped he’d change his mind come Christmas, but that morning had come and gone with strained politeness as she’d unwrapped the paints and canvas he’d given her. She loved the gifts, of course, but nothing had been the same since Mother had struck her. In that one moment her entire childhood had fallen from her like a snake casting off its skin. Mother had made up with her almost immediately, for she’d been horrified with herself and followed Flossie to her room after only a few moments. They’d held each other, both of them apologizing, both of them stricken. It had made them closer than ever before, but in a completely different way—a more grown up, woman-to-woman way.

  Still, she’d decided it was time to make a break. With quick brushstrokes, she swiped dark lines of shadow along the upper edge of the arm she’d sketched, then dabbed at the hairline and gave a squiggle beneath the jaw. It was one thing to determine she wanted to be on her own. It was quite another to go about finding a job, especially when she couldn’t seek the advice of her parents. She wondered how much the model on the platform made.

  A murmur rippled throughout the room. She glanced toward the door where their instructor, Mr. Cox, hustled to greet a couple who’d entered.

  “Tiffany,” he said. “Great Scott, what a surprise. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  Tiffany? Surely not the Tiffany of the jewelry empire? But no, this man looked to be in his forties. He wasn’t nearly old enough to be the real one. And the woman with him didn’t dress in the manner Tiffany’s wife would. Although her organdy waist and black silk skirt were nice enough, they were nothing like what Flossie’s mother would make.

  “Forgive our intrusion.” Tiffany’s headful of brown hair expanded as it was released from his derby hat.

  “Nonsense. You’re welcome any time.” Mr. Cox wiped a beefy hand on his apron, then held it out, his wiry black mustache crinkling when he smiled.

  Tiffany clasped the offered hand. “Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Driscoll. She’s head of my Women’s Department.” He turned to her. “This is Mr. Kenyon Cox. We painted together at the National Academy of Design.”

  Women’s Department? Department of what? And Mr. Cox had painted with a member of the Tiffany family? For though this man was too young to be the jeweler and though he lisped with every s he pronounced, the cut of his coat and the fine cloth it was made from left no doubt that he was somehow related.

  “A pleasure.” Mrs. Driscoll gave a slight bow, the greenish-black rooster-tail feathers in her hat trembling. The woman was no wilting flower, but she was a single-stemmed bloom to Mr. Cox’s solid oak trunk. It had always amazed Flossie that a man of such proportions could paint with the delicacy of Michelangelo.

  “To what do we owe this honor?” Mr. Cox asked.

  Tiffany draped their coats across the back of an old wooden chair. “We’d like to have a look at your students’ work, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  His eyes widened a bit. “Certainly. Are you interested in anything in particular?”

  Mrs. Driscoll moved to one end of the room while Tiffany and Cox began to make a slow circuit around the other. They glanced at the men’s work, but stopped and studied the women’s.

  “I am,” Tiffany said. “I’m sure you heard the lead glaziers and glass cutters went on strike?”

  Mr. Cox pulled a face. “I saw that in the papers and thought of you immediately. I’m assuming it has brought everything to a halt?”

  “Indeed it has, but that’s not the worst of it. The Chicago World’s Fair starts just five months from now and I am in the middle of preparing an exhibit for it—a chapel using every type of glass known to man.”

  Mr. Cox gave him a sharp look. “There’s going to be a display of American stained glass?”

  “Not officially, but when the fair executives realized they’d overlooked provisions for an ecclesiastical art display, they told my father about it. He agreed to portion off a section of his exhibit space so it could be devoted to such. Naturally, Father approached me for the execution of it.”

  Flossie dipped her brush in the turpentine. So he was the heir apparent, Louis Comfort Tiffany. His windows graced her church, and she’d spent more than one Sunday admiring their vibrant colors and luminosity.

  “I hadn’t heard that.” Mr. Cox clapped Tiffany on the back. “That’s marvelous. Congratulations.”

  A lovely smile flashed across his face, then dimmed. “It will all be for naught if I don’t get myself some glaziers and glass cutters—and quick.”

  Across the room, Mrs. Driscoll chatted with Aggie Wilhemson, one of Flossie’s favorites here at school. Aggie stood six feet tall, her blond Swedish heritage evident not just in her bearing, but in the lilt of her voice.

  “Are you going to give into the workers’ demands, then?” Mr. Cox asked, recapturing Flossie’s attention.

  Mr. Tiffany shook his head. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to convince all the other glass manufacturers to do so. No, these things take time and I don’t have any time. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I can’t imagine how I can help, but I’m willing to do what I can.”

  Slipping his hands in his pockets, Mr. Tiffany tilted his head to the side and studied Elizabeth Comyns’s painting. She’d illustrated some books, and though Flossie had never seen them, three of her designs for china painting had been published in this year’s The Art Amateur.

  “I was thinking of hiring some women to do the work,” Mr. Tiffany said.

  Flossie froze.

  Mr. Cox’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Women? To do glass cutting?”

  “To do it all.”

  “Do you think they can?”

  “Mrs. Driscoll seems to think so, and I put a great deal of stock in her opinions.”

  Mr. Cox’s gaze drifted to Mrs. Driscoll, who now conversed with Louise King. The quiet, unassuming girl was Mr. Cox’s star pupil, not just because of her extraordinary talent, but because of a growing attraction between the two.

  “Wouldn’t hiring them get you into trouble with the unions?” he asked.

  “I don’t see how.” Tiffany shot him a conspiratorial look. “Women aren’t allowed to be members of unions.”

  Throwing back his head, Mr. Cox gave a bark of laughter, then swept his arm in a half circle that encompassed the room. “Look all you want, then. There isn’t a student in the room that I wouldn’t recommend.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  From the time Flossie was twelve, she’d watched over the children of Mother’s clients during fittings and design sessions. She’d diapered Eleanor Roosevelt, burped Harold Vanderbilt, and bottle-fed Henry Du Pont. To her, Mr. Tiffany was nothing more than a
n ordinary man who happened to have a lot of money. And though the Tiffany women had never sought out Mother for their clothing needs, she knew this man ate, worked, and slept just like the rest of them.

  Therefore, she could only attribute the drying of her mouth and the queasiness in her stomach to his interest in hiring female artists for his studio. If she could get a job with Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, she’d not only be able to move away from home and be her own woman, but she’d learn a great deal about art, color, texture, and design.

  Mrs. Driscoll paused beside her, glanced at her underpainting, then moved on to the next student. Frowning, Flossie took a step back and studied her work. It looked pretty good to her. Why hadn’t Mrs. Driscoll visited with her the way she had Aggie and Elizabeth? Perhaps she wasn’t the decision maker. No, of course she wasn’t. She was a woman. Mr. Tiffany had said he valued her opinion, but everyone knew men didn’t really—not deep down.

  By the time Mr. Tiffany made it to Flossie’s station, he’d suffered through girls blushing, stammering, giggling too loudly, gawking, and refusing to make eye contact. She felt horrible for him. How tiring it must be to only be seen as an object of wealth and talent instead of a flesh-and-blood man. So great was her pity for him that her queasiness completely vanished.

  Stepping up beside her, he watched her for a moment. “You have a good eye for shadows and highlights.”

  “Thank you.” She mixed some white paint with a touch of umber, then thinned it with turpentine. “The underpainting is one of my favorite layers.”

  He lifted his brows. “It is? Why is that?”

  Shrugging, she squinted at the model, then made a slash of muted white on her figure’s shoulder. “I guess because I get to use the bigger brushes and I can be loose and sloppy. It’s . . . I don’t know . . . freeing, I guess. What’s your favorite part of painting?”

  He gave her a startled look. “The underpainting.”

  She paused. “It is? Why?”

  He looked to the side in thought before turning back to her. “Because I hate to stay in the lines.”

  A smile began to form. “You make your living in stained glass. If that’s not painting inside the lines, I don’t know what is.”

  He answered her smile. “That’s different, Miss . . . ?”

  “Jayne. Florence Jayne.” Propping a hand on her waist, she lifted a brow. “And just how is it different?”

  “It’s all in the coloring of the glass. That’s where I am free.”

  She turned back to her work. “So, picking colors and painting them onto glass gives you a sense of freedom?”

  He whipped himself straight. “I do not use painted glass. Its results are dull and artificial. No, I infuse my glass with color and swirl it up while it’s still hot.” He made a whirling motion with his arm. “The men pour a heavy ladle of molten glass onto a giant iron table, then, in rapid succession, ladle on additional colors. They drag a rake-like tool through it with big, haphazard movements.” He pantomimed the motion, using his entire body to comb the imaginary liquid fire. “The color begins to swirl throughout the glass. Sometimes it streaks, sometimes it pools, sometimes it twists, sometimes it spirals.” His eyes brightened, his face shone. “But no two pieces ever come out the same.”

  The words were lost in his animation and love for the process. He spoke passionately of using paddles along the edges of cooling glass to make it buckle so that it looked like folds in drapery, or jostling tables to make the glass ripple, and sometimes blowing a thin glass bubble, then shattering it and strewing it over the hot glass.

  Oh, to be a man and have the privilege of working a furnace burning at two thousand degrees, to have the freedom of movement their trousers allowed them, the power their muscles afforded them.

  They stood facing each other, his breaths deep, her painting forgotten, her brush loose in her hand.

  “I opened my own glassworks and furnaces this year in Corona, Queens,” he said, his voice soft, his lisp pronounced.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.” He gave her a lovely smile, a smile that would make any woman catch her breath, even if he was twice her age. “We’re no longer restricted, as we were when we used other glassworks.” He shook his head, his curly hair loosened and tumbled from his earlier theatrics. “We try all kinds of experiments in Corona to see what accidental effects we might have, and I must tell you, Miss Jayne, we have produced every imaginable color in every shade, tone, and hue known to man.”

  “But what if you want to reproduce a particular color and style?”

  “We can’t. That’s the whole beauty of it.” A twinkle appeared in his eye. “My superintendent told me just yesterday that there are only two things more uncertain than the manufacture of colored glass—the mood of a woman and the heels of a mule.”

  She laughed.

  Mrs. Driscoll joined them.

  “I’ve found a friend, Mrs. Driscoll. This is Miss Florence Jayne.” He turned to Flossie. “This is the head of my Women’s Department.”

  “How do you do?” Flossie asked.

  “Nice to make your acquaintance.” The woman turned to Mr. Tiffany. “I’ve decided upon five girls who I think will do quite nicely and who have agreed to join us.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “What if we make it six?” He turned to Flossie. “Would you like to come and work for Mrs. Driscoll in our Women’s Department, Miss Jayne? I must warn you, it would require staying within the lines.”

  Her pulse jumped. Her hand flew to her chest. “Oh. Oh, my. Why, yes. I would love to. I . . . I . . .”

  Nodding his head, he looked around the room. “Mrs. Driscoll will give you all the details, but if you ladies will excuse me, I’m going to speak with Mr. Cox for a moment.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  But he’d already walked away, his footfalls sounding briskly on the wooden floor.

  She set her brush down on the palette, then turned to Mrs. Driscoll. “Did—did that just happen?”

  The woman’s face softened. “I believe it did.”

  She was older than Flossie and a good deal younger than Mother. Perhaps thirty? Thirty-two? No more than thirty-five, certainly. She’d fashioned her brown hair into a sensible twist, her brown eyes missing nothing. “We’ll be entirely focused on completing the windows for Mr. Tiffany’s World’s Fair exhibit. There will be little time for training—more of a baptism by fire, I’m afraid.”

  “I understand. How long do you think it will take to do the windows?”

  “Every bit of time between now and May first, when the fair starts. You’ll be expected to put in a full day’s work Monday through Saturday and will be compensated with five dollars a week. Will that suit?”

  Five dollars a week. All of it hers. “Yes, that will suit very nicely. When do I start?”

  “January second. Our studio is at the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-Fifth Street. The Women’s Department is on the third floor.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  Mrs. Driscoll gave her a nod. “See that you do.”

  After Mr. Tiffany and Mrs. Driscoll left, Flossie’s hands shook so much, she could no longer paint—not even the sloppy parts. She’d need to find someplace to live that was closer to Tiffany’s studio. Not just because her parents’ house was too far away to be practical, but because her father would keep her wages if she stayed home. And she needed those wages, needed them so she could save up tuition for art school.

  She wondered how to find a room, how much they cost, and what her parents would say. Shying away from that last thought, she glanced at the other girls whom Mrs. Driscoll had singled out. Maybe one of them would be interested in sharing a room with her. Either way, she would now be what the papers called a New Woman, and what her father called an abomination.

  FASHION PLATE FROM HARPER’S BAZAAR 2

  “ ‘We decided on some sleeves entirely of velvet for the plissé crépon.’ ”

  CHAP
TER

  4

  Mother had a customer in the back. Flossie wasn’t sure who it was, but she used the time to whip up some marmalade pudding. Orange marmalade was the thing Papa loved most and which he insisted be kept upon their table at all times. Chopping up some suet, she tried to decide how best to break her news to them.

  Should she tell Mother, then let Mother tell Papa? Tempting as it was, it seemed rather cowardly. The question then became, should she tell them separately or together? She gathered up the suet and dropped it into a bowl, gave Mother’s vegetable soup a stir, put a different pot on to boil, then spent the next several minutes collecting ingredients. By the time Mother’s customer left, Flossie was whipping up the breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, soda, and marmalade.

  “That was Mrs. Cutting,” Mother said, coming into the kitchen. Taking an apron from a peg, she slipped it over her neck, then tied it around her waist. “She’s ready for the black plissé crépon, the flowered brocade, and the peau de soie gowns to be remade.”

  Flossie added a touch of buttermilk to her mixture. Mrs. Cutting was known for never being seen in the same gown twice, so Mother designed them to be remade, added to, and subtracted from.

  Grabbing an agate bowl, Mother began to grease it. “We decided on some sleeves entirely of velvet for the plissé crépon, a round waist of black baby lamb for the brocade, and a spangled satin collar with pointed tabs for the peau de soie.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Mother glanced at her, then paused and put down her rag. “It was your last day at school. I’m sorry. I should have realized. Are you all right?”