Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass.

William Gudenrath

American glass artist and scholar William Gudenrath (1950– ) initially trained as a musician, earning a BM in organ performance from North Texas State University in 1974 and an MM in harpsichord from The Juilliard School in 1978. However, Gudenrath was fascinated by glass since experiments with a childhood chemistry set and changed paths to become a glassblower, learning and teaching at New York Experimental Glass Workshop (later UrbanGlass) in the 1970s and 1980s. Gudenrath is widely regarded as an authority on historical glassmaking techniques from the ancient world through the eighteenth century and has published extensively in the field. In 1995, Gudenrath and his wife, Amy Schwartz, accepted an invitation from The Corning Museum of Glass to help establish and lead a glass studio at the museum. Gudenrath remains the Corning Studio’s resident advisor. He is also cochair (with Lino Tagliapietra) of the technical committee of Study Days on Venetian Glass at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Venice and is a fellow of the Corning Museum.

Works

Reproduction late 17th-century Venetian Dragon-stem Glass Goblet, 2008. Blown glass. Made for Bard Graduate Center Ancient Ceramics and Glass field trip to The Corning Museum of Glass, 2008. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection. Gift of Elizabeth Simpson. Image courtesy of Bard Graduate Center.

Reproduction Roman Glass Bowl, 2008. Blown glass. Made for Bard Graduate Center Ancient Ceramics and Glass field trip to The Corning Museum of Glass, 2008. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection. Gift of Elizabeth Simpson. Image courtesy of Bard Graduate Center.

Media

Corning Museum of Glass Permanent Artist in Residence, William Gudenrath discusses the history of The Corning Museum of Glass and his role as the Head and Resident Advisor of the Studio.

2:03 Transcript

William Gudenrath discusses the history of The Corning Museum of Glass and his role as the Head and Resident Advisor of the Studio. Oral history interview with William (Bill) Gudenrath, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:02.

William Gudenrath: Well, The Corning Museum of Glass opened in 1951, and it was started back then called Corning Glass Works, now it’s called Corning Incorporated, a Fortune 500 company. It was open to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the company. And it was a gift to the nation, it was a collection both of glass and of books. It was from the very beginning a library as well as the museum, and so that opened in ‘51. I first visited there in 1965; I was 14, I lived in Houston and I had fallen madly in love with glass at 11, age 11. 1962 happens to be the birth of the studio glass movement here, and I made a pilgrimage to Corning to see the museum and above all to look in the library for a book that I wanted. Anyway, so my connection with the museum goes way back to 1965. And skipping way ahead, I’ve become a studio glass artist. I get immersed in that world and I also fall madly in love with glass history and so become a bit of a glass historian. And I did some research and publishing with the then-director of The Corning Museum of Glass, guy named David Whitehouse. And in about ‘94 he asked my wife and me to do a feasibility study to consider building a school in connection with the museum. We did that, and got the go-ahead from the board of directors with the proviso that Amy and I build the thing and run it, program it and run it. So we moved there in the fall of ‘95 and we’ve been there ever since. So the museum—the studio of The Corning Museum of Glass—it’s a department just like the library or the conservation or the collections, whatever. Anyway, the studio of The Corning Museum of Glass opened in May of ‘96. So we just finished our 21st summer of activity.

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https://vimeo.com/486141597

William Gudenrath discusses what drew him to glass.

1:16 Transcript

**William Gudenrath discusses what drew him to glass. Oral history interview with William Gudenrath, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:15.**

William Gudenrath: I got a—for, for Christmas or a birthday—no, it was Christmas. I was given by my father a chemistry set. Back then, a chemistry set was this box full of miscellaneous chemicals that included the chemicals to make gunpowder, by the way. I don’t think they do that today. And it also had three pieces of glass tubing about 8 or about 9 inches long, 5 millimeters in diameter, soft glass, soda lime glass. And there was this little weenie alcohol lamp. And the instruction manual said you were supposed to blow air through the flame to make a hot spot, there was this little blow hose thing, and then soften the tubing on the other side. And I still, to this—I mean, like it happened yesterday; I have a horrible memory, I remember everything. It just plagues me [laughs] all the time. But I vividly remember that like it’s happening now, the first moment I saw that glass tubing soften. And it was a transformative experience and I still am amazed by it. So when you say the videos are amazing and all that, I think it’s amazing too. I just still can’t believe when I gather a gather of molten glass that this all happens, and then it winds up being this fragile thing. You know, it’s all totally amazing still. I’ll never get over that.

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William Gudenrath discusses the studio glass movement as a defining moment in glass history in the 20th century.

0:33 Transcript

William Gudenrath discusses the studio glass movement as a defining moment in glass history in the 20th century. Oral history interview with William Gudenrath, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:32.

William Gudenrath: Well, I was one of the authors of a book published in, I think, 1990 called 5000 Years of Glass. And I like to think that in the edition that comes out in another [laughs] couple of thousand years, the only thing that I think will be mentioned about the 20th century, other than some aspects of high-tech glassmaking, will be the studio glass movement. I think it’s a huge—I think it’s a big deal. And I think it will go down as a major moment in glass history. In the big picture, you know.

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William Gudenrath talks about early studio glass makers’ creativity not being burdened by technical skill.

0:39 Transcript

William Gudenrath talks about early studio glass makers’ creativity not being burdened by technical skill. Oral history interview with William Gudenrath, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:38.

William Gudenrath: The fact that so many of the early practitioners didn’t have any of the control of the material that had evolved through industry. They were coming to it from a casual point of view, without technical skills that had always been associated with glass. I’m talking about glassworking at the furnace, for example. So there was the possibility of a level of creativity that wasn’t burdened with the history of what the hands were used to doing and what the hands knew how to do. You know, that was an interesting thing.

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William Gudenrath discusses his personal relationship with Paul Hollister.

4:35 Transcript

William Gudenrath discusses how he met Paul Hollister. Oral history interview with William (Bill) Gudenrath, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 04:34.

William Gudenrath: I’ll tell you how I met him, and I’ll start with that, I guess. Let’s see. In 1982, I made—I wrote a letter to the British Museum [London, United Kingdom] asking to see a couple of objects that were in a book called The Golden Age of Venetian Glass. and I wrote a letter to the guy who had written the book, Hugh Tate was his name, turned out to be—he was a legendary curator of decorative arts. And I showed up one afternoon and he showed me, had the two pieces out, and he said—and I’d written him a letter saying I’m a glassblower, I’m not a historian, I’m just fascinated with Venetian glass of the Renaissance. And so we finished those two pieces and then he said, ‘If you wouldn’t mind, I have a couple questions for you.’ So an assistant roughed in two carts filled with objects from about 1500 to about 1700. And we spent the rest of the day, and over many years we became very good friends—Hugh and his wife Audrey, I used to stay with them in London. So after a couple of visits with Hugh, he said, ‘There’s a guy in New York you’d really enjoy meeting. His name is Paul Hollister.’ And he knew that I was a musician as well. I’m a musician, play organ, harpsichord, and piano. And he said, ‘Paul knows a lot about music, you two guys would really enjoy each other.’ So the short—the end of the story is that I called Paul, and we had lunch together, and we had lunch together about every two or three weeks for probably five years. And then he got older, they decided to move to New Hampshire. We went to concerts together. We hung out together a lot. Every year we drive to—I would drive us to Corning to the seminar, the October seminar, and he just became a really good friend. And he was a great character, you’ll hear many—you will have heard many stories about Paul. But one of the things we talked about more than glass, way more, was music, because he had grown up being taken to Carnegie Hall [New York, New York] and Symphony Hall in Boston. And he’d heard all of the great pianists from the late 19th century who died off in the ‘50s and ‘60s and stopped playing then. He’d heard them all, and he could tell you what it was like to be in the hall when Rachmaninoff was playing. One time he was sitting behind Joseph Hoffman, a name that maybe doesn’t mean anything to you, but he was a legendary pianist. And he was sitting behind Hoffman and—not Horowitz, but somebody—and Rachmaninoff was playing and Hoffman leaned over to this other guy and said, ‘Susur technician—sweet technique,’ which means he has a really good technique. Paul had these endless stories about the great musicians and once he—every year, apparently, growing up they went to Europe on one of the great ocean liners; and you will have heard, too, that he was an authority on that. He was one of those intensely curious people with a really good memory who just remembered everything and asked about everything and was just super alert, who’s awesome company. And was great—so anyway, he’d taken these trips to Europe every year, and one time he was on the ship with the great conductor of the Boston Symphony, Koussevitzky. You know, Paul had, like, endless stories and I heard him tell many of them a few times so they’re, you know, stuck in my memory. So one time Koussevitzky was on the ship and he was—I think Paul was in his teens, I’m not quite sure, but he said he was pretty young and pretty shy. It’s hard to believe if you knew him as an adult. And he went straight to Koussevitzky and he said, ‘Maestro, may I ask you a question?’ He said, ‘Yes, young man, you can.’ And Paul was a great raconteur; he could do, he could do accents, and the body language as well as Kevin Spacey if you ever have seen him do that. He was an unbelievable raconteur and a wonderful impersonator. So he said, ‘Maestro Koussevitzky, which is greater, the music of Bach or the music of Beethoven?’ And so he would wind himself up and he would transform himself, and he said, [imitating foreign accent] ‘Well, my son, contrapuntically speaking the music of Bach is superior, but to dramatically speaking, the music of Beethoven is superior. They are both good.’ [laughs]

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William Gudenrath talks about Paul Hollister advising Truman Capote on paperweights.

1:42 Transcript

William Gudenrath talks about Paul Hollister advising Truman Capote on paperweights. Oral history interview with William (Bill) Gudenrath, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:41.

William Gudenrath: And he had these endless stories. Ocean liners is something that never remotely interested me, so we didn’t really talk much about it. But I was with him sometimes when there were people who were interested in that, and he got all—he got as wound up about that and he was obviously as knowledgeable about that as he was about the great pianists. And there were other areas, too. Just a fascinating guy. He was a reno—he was a well-known paperweight expert for quite a few years. And one of the people who would call him for advice on buying paperweights was Truman Capote. I don’t know that you’re old enough to ever have seen Truman Capote on a talk show or something, but he had this very, very weird, very effeminate, very liquid kind of mannerism in this very strange voice, odd syntax and everything, and Paul would [snaps fingers] like that. [imitating voice] ‘Mr. Hollister you believe—’ you know and he’d go into this whole thing, cause Capote had asked him whether he should buy this one or that one. And so, paperweights was his thing, but then he got into millefiori, which is, you know what millefiori is, and then he was widely published on the subject of millefiori. And everybody thought he was a millefiori expert. And then the—you know, he got in, really into studio glass in general, and he was hugely, widely read, went to all the openings, you know, it was—he would just immerse himself in something but was never boorish, you know never bored. It was always fascinating to be around him.

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Bibliography

Writings by Paul Hollister Bibliography

Spillman, Jane Shadel. “Paul Hollister 1918–2004.” With an appreciation by William Gudenrath. Journal of Glass Studies 46 (2004): 205–11.

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