"Clara and Mr. Tiffany" [.]

[fiefoe]

I do so like reading about other people hard at work.

• “Then the mold has to be taller than the lowest hanging blossom,” she said. “But then we can’t build up the glass from a bottom ring resting against the mold.” “Start at the top?” I asked. “What are you? A magician? How are these tiny pieces going to stay without anything to rest on?” “Wax?” “And pins,” she said. “We’ll have to put two pins in the wood for each small bottom piece to rest on.”
• “You’re catching on to the scampishness of the new idiom, more than Louis has. I don’t believe he’s aware that the new sensibility of presenting one thing as another extends beyond Art Nouveau. It’s a duplicity more likely appreciated by those living a duplicity. There’s not a name for it yet, though I’m sure one will emerge that will suggest its playfulness.
• released from the prison of resentment
• the glass for the air might be transparent, or active with striations, ripples, pinpoint mottling, or blue streaks.
• I could fill a book with the ill design of my face.
• New York told me that a plain face led a plain life.
• I have to superintend each step to make sure the colors represent those on the original painting, and to give nuances of shade, sunlight, movement of air, and the effect of one color on a neighboring one.
• “Where the sun is shining on the water, use fractured glass with gold and yellow confetti to make it shimmer, and begin to integrate ripple glass as you work downward so that the bottom foreground is completely ripple glass around the water lilies.
• “You ain’t doing nothing, bub. Hold this,” he muttered, handing the soggy stub to Mr. Tiffany. Caught off guard, Mr. Tiffany took the dripping morsel and held it away from his suit, mortal repugnance writhing on his face. Laughter exploded from everyone but the gaffer and the blower.
• “We can use her motto. ‘The true republic—men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.
• A strong wind is gathering to blow down our little department, but it cannot, since our department was founded on beauty and service too. We have only to prove its stability.
• “Think of the word union in its pure sense, and think of the raw feelings afterward if our department were divided.
• “Not if we hold tight on to each other’s waists. Walk firmly in the knowledge that Liberty out there in the harbor is a lady.”
• The octagonal space soars three stories to a ceiling of shimmery glass scallops laid like fish scales. The upper and lower balconies are supported by colonnades, which surround an octagonal stone pool, somewhat like an Islamic bath, with calla lilies and floating lotus plants.
• “One of the men at my boardinghouse knows him,” I said in a near whisper. “He lives alone across the street, and takes his meals here. Rumor has it that he was in prison once. He writes stories here about characters who have lost respectability or integrity and find a way to win it back again. He goes by the name of O. Henry.
• “That at least will last,” he said. I understood that, felt it keenly beneath my ribs, an ever-present pressure to declare the self for future ages.