Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor (1950– ) earned a BA in art education from Kutztown State College (now Kutztown University of Pennsylvania) before joining the Museum of American Glass at the Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville, New Jersey (then Wheaton Village), as the museum’s registrar and librarian. From 1975 until she retired in 2010, Taylor served as director and curator, mounting over 30 glass exhibitions and authoring or contributing to multiple books and catalogues about glass. Taylor also has held leadership roles in the Paperweight Collectors Association, the National American Glass Club, and the Glass Research Society of New Jersey.

Glass historian Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses the history of Wheaton Village’s Paperweight Weekend.

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Gay LeCleire Taylor

Glass Historian Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses how a “Small Scale Sculpture” Weekend idea failed.

Playing01:23 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses how a “Small Scale Sculpture” Weekend idea failed. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:22.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: What happened is the Paperweight Weekend, I don’t want to say, for us nearly died, but Debbie Tarsitano was involved in this, and our new director after my husband was long gone and then we had a new director—was really interested in—more in contemporary glass. So Debbie Tarsitano was pushing this small scale sculpture idea, so we tried the small scale sculpture weekend, which was a total flop. People refused to come, and that’s what these—I don’t know if Paul’s [Stankard] ever talked about what walls he kind of hit sometimes with paperweight collectors that didn’t want the botanicals, didn’t want his more sculptural things, and so he had to look more to the studio movement than the core paperweight collectors. And so after that failure, what we ended up doing to get back into doing Paperweight Weekends is WheatonArts paired with the Delaware Valley chapter of the Paperweight Collectors Association. They became our sort of co-sponsor for the event. So we went back to that core and said, ‘Look okay, we tried the small scale sculpture, it didn’t work. We want to get back to Paperweight Weekends.’

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Glass historian Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses the history behind the brick stack in Wheaton’s glass Studio.

Playing01:03 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses the history behind the brick stack in Wheaton’s glass Studio. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:03.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: So this is a brick stack which has seven openings, would’ve had six openings for pots, historically. And, of course, they were little furnaces, but visually to the visitor, it looked like an historic stack with the arches that would’ve had pots behind, and the floor below would’ve had a draft of air coming through and the fire in the middle. Historically, a furnace would’ve had clay pots made, and the glass would’ve been melted in clay pots. And that was a real art and if you had a bubble in them, they could explode. By going to a furnace and making a brick furnace, it’s much easier to handle and everything else. So it was more a historic façade, so if you were a visitor it would have the image of what the original T.C. Wheaton Factory would’ve had, with the pot openings. But we had modern furnaces controlled by computers inside, hiding out.

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Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses CGCA’s requirement for fellows to leave one piece to document their stay.

Playing00:47 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses the history behind the brick stack in Wheaton’s glass Studio. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:03.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: So this is a brick stack which has seven openings, would’ve had six openings for pots, historically. And, of course, they were little furnaces, but visually to the visitor, it looked like an historic stack with the arches that would’ve had pots behind, and the floor below would’ve had a draft of air coming through and the fire in the middle. Historically, a furnace would’ve had clay pots made, and the glass would’ve been melted in clay pots. And that was a real art and if you had a bubble in them, they could explode. By going to a furnace and making a brick furnace, it’s much easier to handle and everything else. So it was more a historic façade, so if you were a visitor it would have the image of what the original T.C. Wheaton Factory would’ve had, with the pot openings. But we had modern furnaces controlled by computers inside, hiding out.

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Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Wheaton’s Glass Weekends.

Playing01:29 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Glass Historian Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Wheaton’s Glass Weekends. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:29.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: So in the opposite year of paperweight weekend [inaudible] our fellowship project got going, 1983. Once that got going, on the odd years we would have a thing called Glass Weekend. And that would be a total fundraiser to fund the fellowships through two years or help to fund the fellowships; and galleries, you know, we started out small, on the line of the way a paperweight weekend would be, and once we got Heller to agree and Habatat to agree back then and I think this Riley Hawk, we had the lectures in the center of the rooms in the galleries, with their contemporary glass set up around our meeting room, around the perimeter, which moved into this huge weekend where we would have incredible glass artists be the demonstrating artists for the weekend and collectors would come and buy from all these galleries from around the world that were set up in our building and all of that. One year, you know, was Lino and Dale Chihuly were the premiere people demonstrating for the weekend and they were pretty amazing. I mean, Chihuly’s there with all his pencils doing drawings on things or decorating people’s shoes. All kinds of people have shoes and Chihuly painted as you walked by or whatever. It was an event, let me tell you.

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Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses the Wheaton fellowship and its development.

Playing01:43 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses the Wheaton fellowship and its development. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:43.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: I feel like it was sort of a real community back then. Where we were located, we were really rural. You had to find your way to get to Millville. But Philadelphia had Tyler [Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]—had a really good glass blowing program, Philadelphia College of Art had a small one with Roland Yan as the professor, and so there was glassblowing in our immediate area, and so tapping it into those kinds of things—and at first it was our board, or Mr. [Frank] Wheaton and those people, only wanted American artists to be given a fellowship, but we opened that up, and Hiroshi Yamano was sort of the first Japanese artist that came in. And it was learning from each other, really exposing things. We would have these evenings where the artist would talk and they would be sort of explaining their background and how they came into their work and how they chose to work and all of that. And, I don’t want to say we felt young, but it felt like, especially in the 1980s, that things were really happening and colleges were putting glass blowing into programs, and people were visiting and traveling around and doing all of that, and the Glass Arts Society was beginning and having meetings and having lectures and exhibits were happening.

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Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Paul Jokelson and the beginnings of the Paperweight Weekend.

 

Playing02:53 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Paul Jokelson and the beginnings of the Paperweight Weekend. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:53.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: The sort of beginning is a little controversial, okay? I’ll give you a background that—I don’t know if Paul [Stankard] mentioned Paul Jokelson, who is the founder of the Paperweight Collectors Association—and he is a Frenchman who came to New York and settled, but was sort of this importer, and somehow he got himself involved with Saint-Louis and Baccarat and importing these new weights that they were making. And he ran this organization more as his clientele, I guess you could say, that were buying his weights and everything, and then he sort of had this club that you could join. But American paperweights seemed to never be able to break through to what he was doing and marketing and everything else, so there were a group of collectors and there were a group of artists who wanted American paperweights to be recognized. So really what we tried to do is set up an organization that was the American Paperweight Guild, I think is the correct name of it, and so this is in the seventies. And we had a meeting in 1976 in one of the casinos in Atlantic City, and tried to get this idea that American makers could be represented and American history and American weights would be discussed and everything else. And so Paul Jokelson fought it, you know, we were upstarts, and what were we trying to do? Or whatever. But after this huge feud, it sort of settled down, and Paul Jokelson eventually gives up his presidency and turns it over to the membership, and he then becomes this every other year. Wheaton Village would have it on the even years, or it just sort of fell out that way, and then the more international one would be during the PCA and our weekends really began being more focused on American weights. Now we’ll have an international speaker or, or someone come in and speak, but it really was focused more on American and American collecting and the history of American paperweights, you know, from the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company, and the New England Glass Company, and all of those things, so. It was really pushing the envelope against the Paperweight Collectors Association that we started having our weekends. And it was Mr. Wheaton who was the driving force on getting Americans represented: ‘Well, then we’ll do it here.’

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Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Paul Hollister coming to the Paperweight Weekends.

Playing00:46 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Paul Hollister coming to the Paperweight Weekends. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:45.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: So that’s why Paul Hollister, you know—to give lectures and to do things like that on paperweights. Paul Jokelson wasn’t allowing him to be at any of his events, so he started coming to our events, where he could meet, you know, could be with paperweight people and everything else. And he never had a car in New York, he would always ride the bus from Manhattan down to Millville. I think we had to pick him up by the IGA or something like this [laughs] it’s this bus stop. We needed a bus terminal in Millville being this small country place and then—so we would take him back to the bus and he would go back up to New York. You know, it was never beneath him to ride a bus. Never beneath him, you know? Just amazing.

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Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Paul Hollister and his Crystal Palace lecture.

Playing2:01 Transcript
Gay LeCleire Taylor

Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses Paul Hollister and his Crystal Palace lecture. Oral history interview with Gay Lecleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:01.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: He was editor of the National American Glass Club Bulletin from 1975 to 1984. So, you know, multiple years he would—be either writing articles himself for the publication, or getting people to submit articles, which he would then review. So he would be at—you know, they didn’t have—the National American Club didn’t really have conventions or meetings until about 1976, 1975. They started small. So I would have met him early on, when he’s editor of this publication also. So we’d already known each other through paperweights and then he was also in this organization too, being editor of that. And that’s where I would’ve heard him give a lecture on the Crystal Palace and his fascination with the Crystal Palace exhibition and all the things that it took to get this building built, and the glass made, and the glass installed, and all of that. You know, he just loved this building, and talked about that also. Cause you know, he really does sort of begin where he’s sitting there in the park and feels something, something—you know, and he never reminded me of a person that would—physically feel something, you know, what happened here, what is going on for him to go back and research where—I think he was where it was moved to, if you can imagine moving this building, completely moving this building to a second site after the Crystal Palace exhibition is over with. And he’s sitting where it was, and then it burns later on, but all these things that he researched, where these men would sort of be in these sort of hammocks on these wheels and would slide across these things, so that they could seal these glass panes in place and these upper levels and everything, and he really researched the subject. It was fascinating.

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