Dragonfly Lamp and mosaic base, original oil version, 1899, designed by Clara Driscoll. Photo: Colin Cooke. The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany, by Martin Eidelberg, et al

Chapter 21, Dragonfly

It had seemed no great matter that Edwin hadn't seen the dragonfly at Lake Geneva dazzle me with its gorgeous, rainbow wings, but now I wished he had. He'd been tutoring me in concern for the less fortunate, and I had wanted to tutor him in matters of beauty. A person ought to have a counterbalance to downward thought. Allowing beauty a place in the soul was a powerful antidote to the stress and strain of mortal life. It would have done him some good...

Like sea horses, dragonflies were remnants of an ancient epoch when pigs were dinosaurs without brains enough to step around tar pits. What a fecund, swampy world dragonflies saw below them, flashing their iridescent warnings at dinosaurs too dull to notice their call to escape while they could.

In my drawing, I exaggerated the size of the eyes. I wanted them to glow red-orange...Molten glass could be dripped into half-spherical molds, or the eyes could be beads. If I used beads, I could have the hole in the bead facing out so a pinpoint of light would shine through. Gracious, what a lark this was!