Clara and Mr. Tiffany


Book Description

Hoping to honor his father and the family business with innovative glass designs, Louis Comfort Tiffany launches the iconic Tiffany lamp as designed by women's division head Clara Driscoll, who struggles with the mass production of her creations and grieves the losses of two husbands. By the author of The Girl in Hyacinth Blue.




A New Light on Tiffany


Book Description

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) is celebrated today as one of the most influential creative designers of the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries. A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls presents the celebrated works of Tiffany Studios in an entirely new context, focusing on the "Tiffany Girls", the 27 women who laboured behind the scenes to create the masterpieces now inextricably linked to the Tiffany name. Recently discovered correspondence written by Ohio-born Clara Driscoll, head of the so-called "Women's Glass Cutting Department" at Tiffany Studios, reveals in convincing and vivid detail how it was in fact Driscoll who generated designs for such masterpieces as the famous Wisteria, Dragonfly and Peony goods. At the heart of the book are over 50 Tiffany lamps, windows, ceramics, enamels and mosaics, supplemented by a wide array of related documents and archival photographs.




Lisette's List


Book Description

From Susan Vreeland, bestselling author of such acclaimed novels as Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Luncheon of the Boating Party, and Clara and Mr. Tiffany, comes a richly imagined story of a woman’s awakening in the south of Vichy France—to the power of art, to the beauty of provincial life, and to love in the midst of war. In 1937, young Lisette Roux and her husband, André, move from Paris to a village in Provence to care for André’s grandfather Pascal. Lisette regrets having to give up her dream of becoming a gallery apprentice and longs for the comforts and sophistication of Paris. But as she soon discovers, the hilltop town is rich with unexpected pleasures. Pascal once worked in the nearby ochre mines and later became a pigment salesman and frame maker; while selling his pigments in Paris, he befriended Pissarro and Cézanne, some of whose paintings he received in trade for his frames. Pascal begins to tutor Lisette in both art and life, allowing her to see his small collection of paintings and the Provençal landscape itself in a new light. Inspired by Pascal’s advice to “Do the important things first,” Lisette begins a list of vows to herself (#4. Learn what makes a painting great). When war breaks out, André goes off to the front, but not before hiding Pascal’s paintings to keep them from the Nazis’ reach. With German forces spreading across Europe, the sudden fall of Paris, and the rise of Vichy France, Lisette sets out to locate the paintings (#11. Find the paintings in my lifetime). Her search takes her through the stunning French countryside, where she befriends Marc and Bella Chagall, who are in hiding before their flight to America, and acquaints her with the land, her neighbors, and even herself in ways she never dreamed possible. Through joy and tragedy, occupation and liberation, small acts of kindness and great acts of courage, Lisette learns to forgive the past, to live robustly, and to love again. Praise for Lisette’s List “Vreeland’s love of painters and painting, her meticulous research and pitch-perfect descriptive talents . . . are abundantly evident in her new novel.”—The Washington Post “This historical novel’s . . . great strength is its lovingly detailed setting. . . . Readers will enjoy lingering in the sun-dappled, fruit-scented Provençal landscape that Vreeland brings to life.”—The Boston Globe




What Love Sees


Book Description

An uplifting novel inspired by a true story, by the New York Times–bestselling author of Lisette’s List and The Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Jean Treadway is a young, cultured New England woman whose every material need is supplied by wealthy, overprotective parents. Through an arranged correspondence, she meets Forrest Holly—a dirt-poor Southern California rancher whose spiritual foundation turns despair into purpose. As different as they are in background, they share two things: they are both blind, and they are both determined to live an active, normal life and raise a family. While Jean was among the first women to use a Seeing Eye dog on urban streets in the late 1930s, Forrest used a seeing-eye bull, and his horses, to guide him on the ranch in the 1940s. As they discover each other through letters that have to be read to them, his earnestness and folksy humor win her heart, leading to an extraordinary life together, shared by their four children.




Luncheon of the Boating Party


Book Description

From the bestelling author of GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE, "A vivid exploration of one of the most beloved Renoir paintings in the world, done with a flourish worthy of Renoir himself" (USA Today) With her richly textured novels, Susan Vreeland has offered pioneering portraits of artists' lives. As she did in Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland focuses on a single painting, Auguste Renoir's instantly recognizable masterpiece, which depicts a gathering of Renoir's real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine. Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, the novel illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette of vibrant, captivating characters, Vreeland paints their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs so vividly that "the painting literally comes alive" (The Boston Globe).




Girl in Hyacinth Blue


Book Description

This New York Times bestseller explores the life and many owners of an imaginary Vermeer painting in an “impressive debut collection” of linked stories (Publishers Weekly). A Dutch painting of a young girl survives three and a half centuries of loss, flood, anonymity, theft, secrecy, and even the Holocaust. This is the story of its owners whose lives are influenced by its beauty and mystery. Despite their many troubles and unsatisfied longings, the girl in hyacinth blue has the power to inspire love in all its human variety. This luminous story begins in the present day, when a professor invites a colleague to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer—but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of events that trace the ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work’s inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner’s hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in multiple lives. Susan Vreeland’s characters remind us, through their love of this mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts and what in our lives is singular and unforgettable. “Vreeland’s book is a work of art.” —New York Post




Girl in Hyacinth Blue


Book Description

This luminous story of an alleged 36th Vermeer painting begins in the present day and traces the ownership back to World War II, Amsterdam, and to the work's inspiration.




Life Studies


Book Description

A collection of short stories explores art through the eyes of everyday contemporary people or the lovers, servants, children, and neighbors who surrounded great Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masters.




Major Pettigrew's Last Stand


Book Description

Major Ernest Pettigrew is perfectly content to lead a quiet life in the sleepy village of Edgecombe St Mary, away from the meddling of the locals and his overbearing son. But when his brother dies, the Major finds himself seeking companionship with the village shopkeeper, Mrs Ali. Drawn together by a love of books and the loss of their partners, they are soon forced to contend with irate relatives and gossiping villagers. The perfect gentleman, but the most unlikely hero, the Major must ask himself what matters most: family obligation, tradition or love? Funny, comforting and heart-warming, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand proves that sometimes, against all odds, life does give you a second chance.




Tiffany Girl


Book Description

From the bestselling author of It Happened at the Fair and Fair Play comes a compelling historical novel about a progressive “New Woman”—the girl behind Tiffany’s chapel—and the love that threatens it all. As preparations for the 1893 World’s Fair set Chicago and the nation on fire, Louis Tiffany—heir to the exclusive Fifth Avenue jewelry empire—seizes the opportunity to unveil his state-of-the-art, stained glass, mosaic chapel, the likes of which the world has never seen. But when Louis’s dream is threatened by a glassworkers’ strike months before the Fair opens, he turns to an unforeseen source for help: the female students at the Art Students League of New York. Eager for adventure, the young women pick up their skirts, move to boarding houses, take up steel cutters, and assume new identities as the “Tiffany Girls.” Tiffany Girl is the heartwarming story of the impetuous Flossie Jayne, a beautiful, budding artist who is handpicked by Louis to help complete the Tiffany chapel. Though excited to live in a boarding house when most women stayed home, she quickly finds the world is less welcoming than anticipated. From a Casanova male, to an unconventional married couple, and a condescending singing master, she takes on a colorful cast of characters to transform the boarding house into a home while racing to complete the Tiffany chapel and make a name for herself in the art world. As challenges mount, her ambitions become threatened from an unexpected quarter: her own heart. Who will claim victory? Her dreams or the captivating boarder next door?