Butterfly Lamp, by 1899, designed by Clara Driscoll. Photo: Colin Cooke. The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, by Martin Eidelberg, et al.

Chapter 18, Butterfly

In bed that night, an idea flew across my hazy consciousness. Once it landed, I pounced on it as surely as Mr. Butterfly Booth had captured the Red Admiral. It was the secret that Mr. Tiffany and I had agreed to keep until the right time.

The lampshades of Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company were single pieces of blown or molded glass, but the dome covering the baptismal font for the chapel at the Chicago Fair had been made of hundreds of opaque glass pieces set with lead cames. A small dome constructed in that manner but using transparent and opalescent glass and placed over a light source would transmit a soft light. A lampshade could be a three-dimensional, wrap-around leaded-glass window. A hundred yellow butterflies cut and placed as if in joyous flight over a sky blue dome would revolutionize Tiffany lamp making. I could hardly wait for morning. The right moment for the emergence of our secret idea had come.

No. Not quite.