Pequot Library's stained glass windows appeared in the 1910 Tiffany catalog. Learn about Louis Comfort Tiffany below!

Index 

- Announcements
-  Exhibition Connection: Tiffany drew upon William Morris' groundbreaking designs
- Featured Upcoming Programs: Not-to-be-missed talks next week
- Recommended Reading: Two relevant novels
- Recommended Reading: An art project related to our Tiffany windows 
- Special Collections: Tiffany made his name during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
- Spotted at Pequot Library: Another Special Collections item with a link to Feb. 18
- Development Dispatch: Pequot Library received support from Pequot Runners 
- Community Corner: Bittersweet exhibit at Westport Museum for History and Culture

Just launched: two new programs!
A to Z Reading Challenge: Read a different book for every letter in the alphabet in 2023, using any of the first letters in the main word of the title. Open to all ages. Check out our display in the Children's Library for more details. 
AND
Pequot Library Stacks Scavenger Hunt: Successfully complete this entertaining hunt to be entered into a raffle for a $150 gift card to The Pantry. Runs through March 15. See the Front Desk for details and submission info. 

Announcements

Library Hours
Monday - Friday: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Thursday: Open late! 10 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Sunday: closed

Exhibition Connection

Pequot Library's 1898 Tiffany windows, located on the northwest wall of the main book stack area, were designed by William Perry Speck and included in the 1910 Tiffany catalog. Mary Catherine Hull Wakeman gifted them to the Library in memory of her daughter, Eliza Hull Wakeman Taintor. 

Louis Comfort Tiffany, who was born on February 18, 1848, dedicated his life to "the pursuit of beauty" and became an international name, promoting a new American aesthetic. His work grew out of William Morris' work and the Arts and Crafts movement that flourished between 1880 and 1920 and emphasized craftsmanship as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Tiffany's style evolved into Art Nouveau, which, while still inspired by nature, leaned towards greater abstraction and sensuous lines. 

Pequot Library featured Morris in the 2019 exhibition, From Illumination to Illustration: The Art of the Book. Click here to view the online exhibition guide. This frontispiece is from the very last book printed at the Kelmscott Press, produced after Morris’ death in 1896. The wood engraving of “Psyche borne off by Zephyrus” is the product of a close collaboration between the artist Edward Burne-Jones, who produced the line drawing, and Morris, who cut the block himself. The choice to use this image in the very last book from the Kelmscott press is poetic, as Morris and Jones originally created the Cupid and Psyche woodcuts for their first, never-completed printing project,The Earthly Paradise. As with the majority of the woodcut ornaments used in the Kelmscott workshop, the woodcut border was also designed by Morris. For this edition, the press printed 525 paper copies and 12 copies on vellum.

Upcoming Programs

One Book, One Town: Expressions of Grief
February 22, 6 p.m.

In support of this year’s One Book, One Town selection, I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye: A Memoir of Loss, Grief, and Love, please join area mental health experts in a panel discussion on how grief is processed at different ages and life stages. This will be an open and frank conversation with clinicians and experts representing Silver Hill Hospital, Fairfield University’s Counseling & Psychological Services, the Child Guidance Center of Mid-Fairfield, as well as other institutions. Dr. Harry Schmitz, a clinical psychologist and former professor at CUNY and Fordham who also headed his own international consulting firm serving Fortune 500 companies, will co-moderate the panel.

Lecture | Prudence Crandall & Sarah Harris: Race and Reform in Early Connecticut with Joan DiMartino, Curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum
February 23 at 6:30 p.m.

You're invited to the first event in our series of talks for our exhibition (opens February 18), Alphabets, Bedtime Stories, and Cautionary Tales: Children’s Books and the Shaping of American Identity. Discover with Joan DiMartino, Curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum, how Prudence Crandall and Sarah Harris played a role in striving for education equality that shaped a nation. 

Click here to see our full calendar of events.

More For Adults

Clara and Mr. Tiffany
by Susan Vreeland

At the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, Louis Comfort Tiffany made his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained glass windows that he hoped would earn him a place on the international artistic stage. Behind the scenes in his New York studio, the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women’s division, conceived of and designed nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which Tiffany would long be remembered. Never publicly acknowledged, Clara struggled with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faced as a professional woman.
>> Check me out

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson 

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The 1893 Columbian Exposition architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, who also designed the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer lurking at the Exposition was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds, outfitted with sadistic torture devices. 

>> Check me out

For Kids And Teens

Follow this link to an art project based on Pequot Library's stained glass windows! Also swing by our Children's Library to play around with our newly-acquired Tiffany window glass window coloring books. 

Special Collections

At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Louis Comfort Tiffany unveiled the interior of a  Byzantine-style chapel mounted within his father's Tiffany & Co. pavilion. Visitors to the chapel reportedly doffed their hats out of respect, and Louis Comfort Tiffany took home fifty-four medals. Sadly, the uninsured glasshouse was destroyed by fire.

The success of this project brought international fame to the newly-formed Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, which was a precursor to Tiffany Studio, the firm behind Pequot Library's stained glass windows. Click here to see the catalog of what Tiffany displayed during the Exposition. Page eight shows a design by Lydia Emmet, a well-known American artist who studied under William Merritt Chase and hobnobbed with Mary Cassatt. According to Delaware Art Museum Curator of American Art Heather Campbell Cole, Emmet's "domestic window" appeared inside the Byzantine chapel, and Tiffany might also have displayed Emmet's windows made for the home of Samuel Bancroft, a collector known for his Pre-Raphaelite treasures. Read more here. 

Pequot Library's Special Collections holds a catalog from the exposition titled Illustrated Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building, which includes Emmet's sketch shown here of a stained glass window.    

Illustrated Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building, edited by Maud Howe Elliott
Paris and New York: Goupil & Co., 1893
Pequot Library Special Collections

Spotted At Pequot Library

Another February 18 connection to our Special Collections: Toni Morrison was born on this day in 1931. Pequot Library's Special Collections holds a signed copy of Jazz. It's located in the glass cabinets when you first walk into the main entrance before you reach the circulation desk. 

Development Dispatch

Pequot Runners recently awarded Pequot Library a grant in the amount of $1,500 for funding its Passport to Pequot: K-12 School Programs, educational outreach that includes docent-led tours of Special Collections exhibitions featuring primary source material and Meet the Orchestra concerts for students attending Bridgeport Public Schools. Since its pilot year in 2014, Passport to Pequot has offered over 6,000 students access to Pequot Library's Special Collections through high-quality educational experiences while expanding Pequot Library's reach. The program serves students in Fairfield County with the guiding principle of reaching underserved student populations. Over 70 percent of students who attend come from Bridgeport Public School, and Pequot Library offers the program at no cost to Title One schools, including bus transportation.

Interested in a local casual running and walking club for all ages and levels? Join the Pequot Runners! They're a sociable bunch of fitness enthusiasts who think running is more enjoyable when you hit the pavement with friends. Meet us on April 2 at 8:15 a.m. for a casual run or walk followed by yoga, activities for kids, and breakfast. Sign up here.

The Pequot Running Club is the organization behind the Thanksgiving Day five-mile road race and 2.6 mile walk that has become a holiday tradition throughout the region. Net proceeds from the race support local charities benefiting children and families – they've given over $1 million dollars in donations since their inception.

Community Corner

Bittersweet: Chocolate in the American Colonies
Westport Museum of History and Culture

Opening on March 1: This hands-on exhibition explores the connection between chocolate and Westport’s mercantile past in the 18th and 19th century. Learn more about the history of the cocoa industry in the American colonies and how the Saugatuck River and other regional waterways supported the trade. Suggested donation: $5.