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lassmaking has historically been a man’s trade. This can be In the United States, late 19th century glass-cutting shops often
attributed to the ability of boys to access education, handle employed women as waxers, washers, selectors, wrappers, roughers, and
Gintricate scientific chemical demands of creating glass, working smoothers. In some shops, they were also tasked with glass design,
within Guilds as apprentices and then masters, along with the danger needle etching, painting on glass, and stained-glass assembly. They
of working with incredible heat and fire. Around the 17th century, that were, for the most part, nameless, faceless individuals.
began to shift. The power and potential of women in the studio glass field finally
received the recognition they deserved in a 1902 Annual Report of the
It Takes a Woman United States Commission of Labor. “Some manufacturers do not
There is evidence to suggest that women have been actively engaged want female designers ... Once employed, they are preferred because
in glassmaking as early as the mid-17th century as bead stringers. they are naturally of a more artistic temperament. They display more
According to Italian Historian and Professor at Stanford University taste, are always reliable, and can do fully as good work as men. lt is the
Francesca Trivellato, Venetian glassmaker guild regulations permitted opinion that the competition and employment of women in the field
female relatives of glass masters to have limited involvement in the of design ... has tended to improve the work of men.”
manufacture of glass beads. The report made public what many glass insiders like Louis
There is also, according to an article entitled “Breaking the Glass Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) already knew. It also made the craft
Ceiling: Women Working With Glass,” published by The Corning suitable employment for a new generation of 20th-century women glass
Museum of Glass, evidence of itinerant female lampworkers (or flame- designers and artisans; however, their right to work did not extend to
workers) performing for audiences going from town to town in the late receiving credit for their contributions.
17th, 18th, and 19th centuries creating small items such as animals, Today, all that is changing as glass historians, collectors, and museum
flowers, or other ornaments. These “fancy glassblowers” were not curators seek to shine light on the industry’s marginalized makers,
working at a furnace, but at a table over an oil lamp with rods of glass starting with the “Tiffany Girls.”
and turning them into whimsies. One Dublin 1740 newspaper article
describes the talents of a Mrs. Johnson, who made human figures, The Tiffany Girls
birds, swords, ships, and other glass items using a technique now
referred to as making “spun glass.” Traveling troupes in the United
States included some noted artists including Madame J. Reith and
Madame Nora Allen.

Clara Driscoll (top row, far left) and her “Tiffany Girls” were unsung heroes at
Tiffany Studios. Photo: The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of Art
Postcard showing women and children in a cylinder glass factory, Verreries du
Centre de Jumet (Belgium, c. 1910) Rakow Library Chambon Collection.
Louis Comfort Tiffany was known to employ dozens of women
In England, well into the 19th century, glassmaking and glass workers in his glassworks. Women physically cut glass and patterns,
cutting was seen as a generally closed profession for the “softer sex,” but and worked on copper foiling on glass. He also had a stable of women
throughout Europe, the times were changing, and in countries such as designers, known as the “Tiffany Girls.” At the time, Tiffany was lauded
France, Belgium, and Germany, women had become a “source of great for his progressive efforts to employ women, and even paid them equal
industry,” according to an 1887 English glass trade journal cited for wages to their male counterparts, but he considered his name to be a
this article. “A great quantity of the imported tumblers, wines, etc., are brand so he rarely spoke publicly of the designers, whether male or
cut by women, and they are cut in clean, well-ventilated shops, nearly female, who worked for him, and there is a limited company record of
approaching comfort.” their contributions.

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