The Tiffany Girls

 

The Tiffany Girls

Shelley Noble

Publication date: May 9, 2023 by William Morrow

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 4 🍷🍷🍷🍷

Summary: New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble wows with a gripping historical novel about the real-life “Tiffany Girls,” a fascinating and largely unknown group of women artists behind Tiffany’s most legendary glassworks.

It’s 1899, and Manhattan is abuzz. Louis Comfort Tiffany, famous for his stained-glass windows, is planning a unique installation at the Paris World’s Fair, the largest in history. At their fifth-floor studio on Fourth Avenue, the artists of the Women’s Division of the Tiffany Glass Company are already working longer shifts to finish the pieces that Tiffany hopes will prove that he is the world’s finest artist in glass. Known as the “Tiffany Girls,” these women are responsible for much of the design and construction of Tiffany’s extraordinary glassworks, but none receive credit.

Emilie Pascal, daughter of an art forger, has been shunned in Paris art circles after the unmasking of her abusive father. Wanting nothing more than a chance to start a new life, she forges a letter of recommendation in hopes of fulfilling her destiny as an artist in the one place where she will finally be free to live her own life.

Grace Griffith is the best copyist in the studio, spending her days cutting glass into floral borders for Tiffany’s religious stained-glass windows. But none of her coworkers know her secret: she is living a double life as a political cartoonist under the pseudonym of G.L. Griffith—hiding her identity as a woman.

As manager of the women’s division, Clara Driscoll is responsible for keeping everything on schedule and within budget. But in the lead-up to the most important exhibition of her career, not only are her girls becoming increasingly difficult to wrangle, she finds herself obsessed with a new design: a dragonfly lamp that she has no idea will one day become Tiffany’s signature piece.

Brought together by chance, driven by their desire to be artists in one of the only ways acceptable for women in their time, these “Tiffany Girls” will break the glass ceiling of their era and for working women to come.

My thoughts: Noble created a wonderful story that provided just a glimpse into the world of the Tiffany Glass Company. Readers meet three women whose lives converged in one workshop. Each of them was creative and had artistic abilities. Despite their own talents, none of the women received individual credit for their contributions or creations while working for Louis Comfort Tiffany. Even though they all worked at the Women's Division of the Tiffany Glass Company that wasn't what defined them. Noble artfully wrote three characters that could easily have been main characters in their own story. Clara, Grace, and Emilie each represented women who were attempting to obtain more than what was socially acceptable. By the end each woman had broken through that illustrious glass ceiling toward their ultimate goals. 

The characters were engaging and their stories were compelling. This book was delightful for its insight and for the individual plotlines. 

I received a copy of this title via NetGalley.