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The exhibition is "really one of the first in-depth studies of the lamps from Jewellery on Sale more scholarly perspective," Conway said. That was made possible by the discovery in 2005 of richly detailed letters written by Clara Driscoll, who designed nearly all the floral shades. She is now credited with first having the idea Elsa Starfish make lamp designs based on nature. She joined Tiffany Studios in the late 1880s and became the head of the women's glass-cutting department. Starting in 1898, Tiffany manufactured lamps she designed featuring flowers and insects. (Men designed the geometric shades.) The show Elsa Woman Watch with a display illustrating the process of making a Tiffany lamp: A watercolor sketch was translated into a plaster mold, and that design got transferred onto a wooden mold. Workers then created templates to use as guides in cutting the glass. Each glass piece had to be selected, cut, Engine-turned money clip in copper foil and, finally, soldered together with lead. The last step was applying a patina, often bronze or gold, to the silvery solder lines. "We start with that in the exhibition, because it's important to know how labor-intensive these shades were," Conway said. Louis Comfort Tiffany, a former painter who shifted into decorative arts, loved nature and embraced Driscoll's designs. "Here's something fun about the installation," Conway said. She walked over to a display of two peony library lamps dating from 1900-1913. Both used the same pattern, but the one on the left cleanly defined its leaves and flower petals. A glass selector chose a lot more red for the other lamp, which made the petals bleed into the leaves. "It's very hard to distinguish what's flower, what's leaf, what's background."