The Corning Museum of Glass

Corning, NY

Modern Glass Gallery, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

 

Introduction

Introduction

In 1951, in celebration of its hundredth anniversary, Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated) established The Corning Museum of Glass in the company’s hometown of Corning, New York. Since its beginning, the museum has maintained both an extensive collection of glass—it currently holds more than fifty thousand objects spanning three and a half millennia—and a substantial research library. The museum has permanent exhibitions showcasing the history and science of glass; organizes temporary exhibitions; publishes scholarly and artistic journals; provides public glassworking demonstrations; and offers resources for glass artists and students. As The Corning Museum of Glass has grown, it has significantly revised its campus. Paul Hollister wrote an enthusiastic review of the museum’s first major reorganization, which included the opening of a dramatic new building in 1980.

The Corning Museum of Glass strongly spurred the studio glass movement by strengthening artistic exchange and public interest in contemporary glass and by providing support for artists. This section explores a few of the memorable Corning exhibitions that documented and altered the direction of studio glass, as well as influential initiatives like its glass studio and annual publication, New Glass Review. It also describes Corning’s own early and ongoing involvement with art glass through its Steuben division, whose lasting influence is attested to in Corning Museum exhibits on the division’s cofounder Frederick Carder. Featured, too, are excerpts from a 1983 interview with Věra Liškova by Paul Hollister, and interviews and correspondence, from 2016 to 2020, with James Carpenter, Michael Glancy, William Gudenrath, Ferdinand Hampson, Douglas Heller, Dwight Lanmon, Tina Oldknow, Mary Shaffer, Susie Silbert, Paul Stankard, Debbie Tarsitano, Victor Trabucco, and Toots Zynsky. The section also includes archival images of key exhibitions, a transcript of Paul Hollister’s walk-through of Corning’s New Glass: A WorldWide Survey exhibition (1979), and an audio excerpt from the recording. In addition, there is a transcript of lectures on paperweights given by Hollister and Dwight Lanmon and a list of selected publications and related research by Hollister highlighting his engagement with The Corning Museum as a curator and critic.

Writings by Paul Hollister Bibliography

“The New Corning Museum of Glass, a Personal View.” Glass Club Bulletin, no. 30 (Summer 1980): 3–5.

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“Hollister on Glass: Corning’s Glass Mecca.” Collector Editions 8, no. 4 (Fall 1980): 34.

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Toots Zynsky discusses the importance of Corning.

02:49 Transcript

Toots Zynsky discusses the importance of Corning. Oral history interview with Toots Zynsky, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:48.

Toots Zynsky: I think a lot more should be talked about Corning because Corning has been an amazing resource in—at every level. When Mathijs Teunissen Van Manen and I started researching—making a real thread-pulling machine, not just a contraption, that he had made by himself, I called up Bill [Willam] Warmus at Corning [The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York]. Who I knew just a little bit because I’d been one of the editors of New Work, which is now Glass Quarterly that, you know, originated with—New York Experimental Glass Workshop [New York, New York], Hans Frode and I kind of took it over, and [laughs] started publishing it again. And so I had called Bill to do interviews on certain things. So I had known—I knew him a little bit and I said, ‘Well, you know, maybe Corning [Corning Incorporated], you know, would let us look at fiber optics,’ and—which I knew kind of basics about. And I called up Bill and he said, ‘Okay,’ you know, ‘I’ll work on it. Call you back.’ Called me back within a day. He said, ‘Okay, you’re, you know, we’ve got—we’ve got you the day with one of our chief engineers.’ Boom. So we drove up. I borrowed a car from one of my students [laughs] and we drove up to Corning and they had given us, I think his name is Ed Shlecta [phonetic], for the whole day. I mean, he just showed us everything and then he was curious to show us things that they had just developed and they were looking for artists and creative people to figure out what could be done with this new invention in glass, knew they were working on glass ceramics and photosensitive glass and all of that. And so there was already this interchange going on, and with many artists too, not just me. Corning has always been incredibly generous to the whole field of, you know, glass artists, artists working with glass, with information, materials. I mean, I would call up the library there and say, ‘Virginia, I’m doing some research on pâte de verre for an article.’ And she’d say, ‘Oh, well,’ and I said this, ‘I can’t find anything down here.’ And she said, ‘Oh, well. Give me your address.’ And, you know, within a few days I’d have this envelope like this, and she would’ve photocopied like, all Xeroxed, you know, just this dossier of information on pâte de verre. I mean, they were fantastic like that, and still are.

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Former Corning Museum of Glass Director Dwight Lanmon discusses the impetus to “make glass interesting” to the public.

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Dwight Lammon

Dwight Lanmon discusses his impetus to “make glass interesting” to the public. Oral history interview with Dwight Lanmon by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:52.

Dwight Lanmon: That idea started basically with Jamie [James] Houghton who was then the chairman of the board of Corning Glass Works and I reported to both of the Houghtons—the brothers who were both—served as chairman and they served as president of the museum. So I reported directly to the head of corporation and one time Jamie invited a group called Young Presidents Association which were young presidents of corporations and really just starting out, but brilliant young people and he introduced me and I was at dinner, and then I was expected to take them through the museum afterwards and I said to Jamie as we were getting ready to start the program. I said, ‘Jamie, you give us 10 million dollars a year out of Corning Glass Works budget. Why do you do that? What is it you expect of me,’ and he smiled and he said, ‘Make glass interesting.’ He said, ‘That’s all, make glass interesting.’ He said, ‘I’ll take it from there.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, what a way to stoke you, and to get the interest in’—okay, fine everything we do has to make glass interesting. We know that people who came to Corning didn’t care at all about the history of glass. Okay, how are we going to grab them? Well, there are ways to do it. And so we experimented with those to make glass part of everyday life part of not history and antiquity, but to say there were living people who used these glass objects when they were new. Now, let me tell you about those people, and so we tried to relate it back to human beings all the time. And so that has been my role in museum work all along. How do I make glass interesting and understandable to people who don’t care? So you have one chance with a guest and that’s it. You have one chance, and if you blow it you’ve blown it.

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Artist Paul Stankard talks about Paul Hollister and The Corning Museum of Glass.

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Paul Stankard

Paul Stankard talks about Paul Hollister and The Corning Museum of Glass. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:32.

Paul Stankard: Well they—the Corning crowd, I think Paul was very respected. You know, he was appreciated, and he was respected in The Corning Museum crowd, and they were very scholarly up there. Paul was perfect for them because he was a glass art historian. He was an expert on paperweights. And then he became knowledgeable and critiqued studio glass. So he was like the man for all seasons. Plus he had all the credentials.

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Artist Debbie Tarsitano discusses The Corning Museum of Glass.

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Debbie Tarsitano

Debbie Tarsitano discusses The Corning Museum of Glass. Oral history interview with Debbie Tarsitano by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 18, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:34.

Debbie Tarsitano: The Studio at The Corning Museum of Glass opened up this whole world for me. It’s like a—it’s the most extraordinary place on the planet for glass. And everybody comes there; it’s like the Mecca. And you can do whatever you want; they have every piece of equipment possible; they have every help possible. People come from all over the world, so you could be standing there and there’s somebody from the Middle East there working on something next to you, and it’s like—it’s just an extraordinary place. And I saw the freedom of being able to make anything that you wanted, and like, that was supposed to be good there.

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Corning Glass Works and Steuben

Corning Glass Works and Steuben

Corning Glass Works began in the mid-1800s as a maker of functional scientific and household objects. The company acquired the nearby Steuben Glass Works, known for its decorative art glass, in 1918, and maintained it as a separate division. Steuben, named after the New York county in which the city of Corning is located, was founded in 1903 by Thomas G. Hawkes and the English designer Frederick Carder. When in 1951 the Corning Museum opened next to the Steuben’s facilities, visitors could watch company glassblowers at work through a window designed for this purpose. The following year, the museum staged the exhibition Frederick Carder, His Life and Work, highlighting the Steuben cofounder’s long career.

Frederick Carder’s Influence 

Frederick Carder’s work as a glass designer and artist left its mark on early leaders and observers of the studio glass movement. Harvey Littleton, an essential figure in the movement, greatly admired Carder. Littleton grew up in the city of Corning, where his father, Dr. Jesse Talbot Littleton, was Corning Glass Works’ first physicist. Carder lived near the Littleton family, and he ran Corning’s board of education. He continued to work in glass after leaving Steuben in 1932 and became especially known for cast glass sculptures. The Corning Museum of Glass has devoted an entire gallery to Carder, with many objects on loan from the nearby Rockwell Museum, founded by Carder’s longtime friend and collector Robert F. Rockwell, Jr. Paul Hollister, long interested in Carder’s work, contributed an essay to the catalogue for the Rockwell’s 1993 show Brilliance in Glass: The Lost Wax Glass Sculpture of Frederick Carder. Carder did not get a chance to see studio glass flourish; he died at the age of one hundred, a year after Littleton’s 1962 workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art demonstrated that glassblowing could be done by artists outside the factory.

Transition and the Houghton Years 

As Steuben lost money during the economic depression of the 1930s, Corning Glass Works substantially reorganized. The company turned to new director Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr., a great-grandson of Corning’s founder, to lead the process. Carder stepped down from Steuben and became artistic director for Corning Glass Works. Houghton transitioned Steuben away from the brightly colored glass that had been its specialty and focused on Corning’s recently developed clear crystal. He also established Steuben’s design department. Under Carder, expert glassblowers had both designed and made Steuben’s wares. Houghton separated these processes, hiring designers to develop objects with consumer appeal to be produced in quantity by Steuben’s skilled artisans. Noted industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague came on board as a consultant and developed modern tableware designs. Houghton then brought Steuben design in-house, hiring architect John M. Gates as Steuben’s managing director and sculptor Sidney Waugh as its chief associate designer.

About the same time, Steuben began collaborating with prominent contemporary artists. In 1937, it commissioned twenty-seven artists—including Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Isamu Noguchi, and Georgia O’Keeffe—to create designs that were engraved on crystal vessels and exhibited as 27 Artists in Crystal. Later, Corning Museum of Glass Founding Director Thomas S. Buechner brought Steuben’s artist-designers to the forefront when he became president of the company in 1972. Studio glass artists such as Paul Schultz (design director), James Carpenter, David Dowler, Peter Aldridge, and Jane Osborn-Smith designed unique pieces for Steuben. During the 1970s, Dwight P. Lanmon, then director of the museum, invited Steuben designers to view historical glass in the museum’s collection. Despite some initial reluctance, they warmed to drawing inspiration from the museum’s holdings.

Steuben has consistently referenced its own history, bringing back into production pieces by designers like Dorwin Teague and reintroducing glassmaking techniques popularized by Carder. Both Steuben and Corning as a whole have consulted with glass artists to improve production. For example, James Carpenter, a designer for Steuben, spent ten years (1972–1982) as a consultant at Corning, where he experimented with the photosensitive glass that later informed his architectural practice. Paperweight maker and inventor Victor Trabucco created a polishing machine that Steuben began using in the early 2000s, and the firm redesigned its cold shop based on Trabucco’s specifications.

Further Reading: Mary Jean Madigan, Steuben Glass: An American Tradition in Crystal (New York: H. N. Abrams, 2003).

James Carpenter discusses doing research for Corning Glass Works.

00:36 Transcript

James Carpenter discusses doing research for Corning Glass Works. Oral history interview with James Carpenter by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 20, 2018, JCDA Studios, New York, New York. Clip length: 00:36.

James Carpenter: So my own work began to be sort of in the ‘72, three, four, there began doing more photography on glass and film installations and that coincided with some work I did at Corning on photosensitive glass. So I got invited to go to work at Corning which I did for several years. So—and that introduced me to obviously a much more technical level of glass making and I worked with a really terrific person there, fortunately, who invented glass ceramics so I learned a lot. He was very generous with his time.

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James Carpenter talks about glass as a compression material.

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James Carpenter talks about glass as a compression material. Oral history interview with James Carpenter by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 20, 2018, JCDA Studios, New York, New York. Clip length: 04:14.

James Carpenter: Well, I think that’s it. Yeah. I think glass always is a little bit—or unfortunately characterized for one characteristic, you know, just its potential fragility, ease of breakage, all that, on the other hand glass is remarkably strong, you  know, in certain conditions, particularly compression and, you know, glass is in fact, stronger than steel, you know, in compression conditions. I think a lot of that [inaudible] is going back to, you know, talking about working in Corning and some other things, just learning about glass and material. We, one of the biggest things we worked on over the last 25 or 30 years is on the structural use of glass where you actually deploy the glass as a contributing member of a larger structure and system. And that really just was not something that was being done by anybody. You know, today, you see, I mean, actually we did the very earliest [inaudible—according to Ben Coleman, JC is talking about JCDA using glass structurally for stairs and other things long before Apple] stairs and stuff like that, but now you sort of see it around and it’s become sort of a signature. But that’s the, that’s—and I think that, that’s the, I think that that’s, that’s a very interesting thing because it confounds people that what, what they perceive as being very fragile and potentially dangerous, and all those things can in fact be remarkably safe, and not a problem at all. So in Tower 7, I think, I think maybe what you’re referring to is the blast wall at the front of the building? And that’s a little bit of another example of some of the stuff we did in structures. That’s a detail where we’ve done a lot of these big cable wall systems in Germany and Columbus Circle is one, one year, that’s the one at Hudson Yards is a cable system too. There—and the, the reason I got involved in those early on like, early nineties, is that I’ve always been interested in the qualities of the glass itself. And this is coming back to what I said about reflective images of the surface or what’s behind it or what you’re doing inside the class. The information that’s resident on the glass or within the class is very subtle and can be very easily overlooked. And a lot of times structure using glass, it’s either going to be a heavy frame to hold the glass like on a building or curtain wall, or you might be aware of a lot of these other structural systems which have big cable trusses and the glass is basically held by point fixings on these big cable structures. Well, all of those systems are assuming the glass has no strength, therefore, you have to have this really robust structure around it to hold it. And the glass is just going along for the ride. And what we’ve tried to do over the last 30 years is minimize the actual visual apparent presence of structure just with simple cable, and you’re actually letting the glass work and the glass becomes a participant in the structure and in that cable wall at the 7, that dynamic is obviously a very sort of instantaneous load and the wall will move with roughly three feet. So what we’ve done is in the, where the cables cross each other, each fitting embedded in the glass with this material that we’ve worked on developing the glass is actually allowed to slide and come back into the fitting. So the glass would actually, you know, silicone joints have great elasticity to them. That’s the great strength of glass so in the joint you have conventional silicone joint, but at the corners it actually is allowed to slip and come back. So the whole wall can actually distort all the panels, move away from each other, you know, three-dimensionally. And then it come in and go the other way, which is obviously the reciprocal [inaudible.]. So anyway, that was always—and then the principle, the reason I sort of got involved in that is like you want the glass to always be predominant. That’s what you want people to focus on. And then just not, not contradicting what I said about not to look at the object, but it’s, it’s, you want the subtlety to be available for interpretation or recognition.

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Writings by Paul Hollister Bibliography

“James Carpenter: Adventures in Light and Color in Space.” American Craft 51, no. 3 (June/July 1991): 28–35.

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Blue Aurene Vase, Frederick Carder, Steuben Glass Works, Corning, New York, c. 1920s. Transparent cobalt lead glass, iridescent blue surface. Overall H: 31.7 cm, Diam (max): 30.1 cm Collection of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Gift of Frederick A. Seib in memory of Mr. & Mrs. Frederick G. Seib. (94.4.65). 

Whisper Whiskey Set, Steuben, 2018. Lead crystal. Decanter H: 9 in, W: 4 in., Glasses H: 3.5 in, D: 3.5 in. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Corning Museum of Glass Curator of Modern and Contemporary Glass, Susie Silbert discusses the relationship between Corning Glass Works and The Corning Museum of Glass.

00:47 Transcript

Susie Silbert discusses the relationship between Corning Glass Works and The Corning Museum of Glass. Oral history interview with Susie Silbert conducted by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:46.

Susie Silbert: The Corning Museum of Glass [Corning, New York] was founded by the Houghton family, which is—which are the founders of Corning Glass Works, now Corning Incorporated, as a gift to the nation to teach the country about the material of glass. And so it’s always been a nonprofit, but it has also—both Corning Museum and Corning Glass Works are closely aligned. I think one of the things that I notice the most and that infuses everything about the museum is that Corning Incorporated is a company that’s devoted to R&D, that believes in research and that sees the benefit in research and takes a long view, and I see that in everything the museum has done.

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Former Corning Director Dwight Lanmon discusses the Houghton era of Steuben.

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Dwight Lanmon

Dwight Lanmon discusses the Houghton era of Steuben. Oral history interview with Dwight Lanmon by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:05.

Dwight Lanmon: This was in part, I think, due to what happened in 1932 or so when Arthur Houghton took over Steuben, and took it over from Fred Carder and wanted to change it dramatically, and what he did was to bring in architects and designers and artists, and not really glass people. And so you have the great early—you know, the thirties, forties, fifties, Stueben which is designed by people who were not glassmakers at all, but were simply aesthetics—aesthetes, who knew the modern design world. I think they were also influenced by Sweden, by what was going on at Orrefors [Orrefors Glassworks, Orrefors, Sweden] and elsewhere. But the modern movement was really started by Arthur Houghton and his compatriots, and I think it was continuing into the sixties and seventies when they said, ‘Okay, we’re gonna be independent designers, we’re not gonna be derivative of glass history.’

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Dwight Lanmon discusses Steuben’s designers.

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Dwight Lanmon

Dwight Lanmon discusses Steuben’s designers. Oral history interview with Dwight Lanmon by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:44.

Dwight Lanmon: It was very interesting while I was there as before I became director, in—at Corning, that I got to know all of the Steuben designers very well. And I said, ‘Come on over and let’s talk about these things, and see what you think of them,’ and their answer was, ‘We never go in the museum, because we don’t want to have anybody say that we’re derivative.’ ‘We never look at historic glass.’ And I thought, ‘That’s sad.’ And fortunately during my time there that attitude changed. But they were so afraid of being judged to be derivative of earlier styles, and I think that fortunately that that attitude is now significantly over.

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Dwight Lanmon speaks about Thomas Buechner and Stueben.

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Dwight Lanmon

Dwight Lanmon speaks about Thomas Buechner and Stueben. Oral history interview with Dwight Lanmon by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:19.

Dwight Lanmon: And what was interesting was that Tom Buechner, when I went to Corning as the chief curator, Tom Buechner was the president of the museum and he was also president of Steuben. So there’s the crossover. And it was, I think, mainly because of him that I got to know the designers so well.

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Michael Glancy discusses James Carpenter’s experience as a designer at Corning Glass Works.

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Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy discusses James Carpenter’s experience as a designer at Corning Glass Works. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:19.

Michael Glancy: The difference between the Americans—the American studio glass artists design and make their own objects. This became pretty apparent when Jamie Carpenter was hired by Corning Glass Works [Corning Glass Works, now Corning Incorporated, Corning, New York] in the ’80s, I think it was. And he designed objects in the tradition of—the European tradition of a designer in a studio on paper. He took them down to the floor to have prototypes made, [clears throat] and the blower said, ‘You can’t do that. It just—you can’t do that. That won’t work.’ And Jamie said, ‘Oh, sure you can. Here, let me show you.’ And then bells went off in the factory—‘woop woop woop’ [mimicking the sound of an alarm] ‘Designer is touching a blowpipe.’ And they had to stop and rewrite the Flint Glass Workers [Union] contract to identify a studio glass artist as someone who designs and makes his own pieces, and for the purpose of educating the workforce can demonstrate how he wants them to be done. And that’s a true story.

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Victor Trabucco discusses consulting for Corning Glass at Steuben.

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Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco discusses consulting for Corning Glass at Steuben. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:39.

Victor Trabucco: And then in the late nineties, early 2000, I was a consultant for Steuben glass [Steuben Glass Works, Corning, New York] I—and I’ve invented—I’m probably the one of the only lampworkers that has such an extensive cold working shop. I’ve invented machines, and a process for polishing glass. Some of that technology I sold to Corning Glass at Steuben. They used my system for about 10 or 15 years, and like 60% of their production went through the system that I built for them. I changed their whole operation. They actually dismantled their whole cold working shop, and rebuilt it.

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The Studio

The Studio

In the mid-1990s, The Corning Museum of Glass expanded its educational mission beyond collections and research into hands-on glassmaking, adding a state-of-the-art glass studio. Accessible to the public, The Corning Museum of Glass Studio has functioned as both a school and an artistic resource, offering classes in glassworking and artist residencies. Artist William Gudenrath and educator Amy Schwartz oversaw the Studio’s planning and opening in 1995, with Gudenrath as resident advisor and Schwartz as director.

Entrance, The Corning Museum of Glass Studio. Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

The Corning Museum of Glass Studio. Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

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.

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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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Influential Exhibitions

Influential Exhibitions

The Corning Museum of Glass has regularly organized and staged special exhibitions on specific topics since its opening in 1951. Some of these shows—featuring ancient to contemporary glass—have significantly influenced glass artists, scholars, and collectors and remain important touchstones in the field.

New Glass at Corning: Glass 1959, New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979), and New Glass Now (2019)

Cover. Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition of International Contemporary Glass.  Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 27614).

Cover. New Glass Now (2019), featuring image of Rui Sasaki’s Liquid Sunshine/I am a Pluviophile. Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 37677).

Cover. New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979), featuring image of Tom Patti’s Banded Bronze. Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 20603).

In 1959, 1979, and 2019, the Corning Museum staged state-of-the-art international surveys of contemporary glass. These influential exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues led to greater awareness of and heightened interest in recent work in the medium. Together, these shows marked important developments in the field over a sixty-year period.

Susie Silbert compares the Corning ‘59, ‘79 and 2019 shows.

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Susie Silbert compares the Corning ‘59, ‘79 and 2019 shows. Oral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:58.

Susie Silbert: 1959 is interesting because it was almost entirely work of design. It was work by designers from manufacturers in large part. Most of the objects were small and most of the selectors—which included the likes of Edgar Kaufmann Jr. formerly at MOMA, Gio Ponti the Italian designer, and others—were really thinking about household objects, good design for the home, and they chose things that highlighted elements of good design. They chose some enormous number, maybe ninety-two, clear glass goblets. At the same time, the museum recognized—the museum in the guise of assistant director Paul Perot and director Tom Buechner, recognized that there was a lot of interesting sculptural work coming out of the Czech Republic, and they added sixty pieces of Czech glass and that created new opportunities for the medium. That same kind of thread, this idea of artistic work in glass, was picked up in the exhibition New Glass Worldwide Survey in 1979. That show had almost no design, just a little bit from Japan and from a few other places, maybe some Massimo Vignelli baking dishes, but by and large, it was work by artists in, in their own studios, or craftsmen in their own studios. Today, the 2019 show, one of the things that I think is most exciting, at least for me, is that that exhibition brings together both the design impulse of the 1959 show, that craft or the artist author work of ‘79, and then a range of other approaches. So contemporary artists that don’t work with the materials themselves, designers that don’t work with the materials themselves, designers that do work with the materials themselves. So I think that the 2019 show New Glass Now really sums up these earlier approaches in one package.

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Susie Silbert discusses the geographic and demographic growth of artists in the three Corning glass survey shows.

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Susie Silbert

Susie Silbert discusses the geographic and demographic growth of artists in the three Corning glass survey shows. Oral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:49.

Susie Silbert: The other thing that’s interesting about these exhibitions, ‘59, ‘79, and 2019, is the way that they document the growth of the field, the geographic kind of growth and demographic growth of the field, so I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me but the ‘59 show maybe had worked from just 21 countries, the ‘79 show from much more, today the 2019 show had worked from 26 countries, 32 nationalities. And I think shows the range of places and people that are using the material today, so I was really kind of heartened to see that it included—2019 show included works from artists between the ages of 23 and 85, which you just couldn’t have seen in any of these earlier periods.

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Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition of International Contemporary Glass

The Corning Museum’s 1959 survey of contemporary glass generated unprecedented interest in the field. Organized by the museum’s founding director, Thomas S. Buechner, the exhibition of 292 objects began with an open call that resulted in submissions from around the globe. The entries were assessed by five jurors: Leslie Cheek, Jr., director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., former director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art; Russell Lynes, editor of Harper’s Magazine; architect and woodworker George Nakashima; and architect and designer Gio Ponti. The objects they selected represented individual and corporate makers in twenty countries. Most were mass produced and available for public purchase, but unique sculptural works also were included. By bringing together such a large array of contemporary glass, the exhibition presented to the public the medium’s possibilities for art and design. The show subsequently traveled to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition of International Contemporary Glass, Installation view. Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 714711).

Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition of International Contemporary Glass, Installation view. Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 713974).

New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979)

Twenty years later, Buechner reprised the 1959 selection process to develop New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979) with project director Antony Snow and assistant curator William Warmus. A panel comprising Franca Santi Gualteri, editor of Abitare magazine; Russell Lynes (again); Werner Schmalenbach, director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, in Düsseldorf; and Paul J. Smith, director of the American Craft Museum, selected from among entries received in response to an international open call for submissions. This influential exhibition featured the work of nearly two hundred artists and organizations representing twenty-eight countries in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Twenty-four artists were from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) alone. The show traveled to the Toledo Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The catalogue cover featured a single work, Tom Patti’s Banded Bronze. New Glass sparked new interest in the field, particularly among critics and individual and institutional collectors.

New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (April 26-October 1, 1979), Entrance to exhibition featuring Věra Liškova’s Anthem of Joy, Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (April 26-October 1, 1979), Installation view, Corning Museum of Glass. Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Tina Oldknow discusses the Corning ‘79 exhibition.

00:13 Transcript

Tina Oldknow discusses the Corning ‘79 exhibition. Oral history interview with Tina Oldknow, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:12.

Tina Oldknow: A lot of people understood, or came to know, what the studio glass movement was because of the Corning show Glass 1979, and more so because of the catalog.

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Paul Hollister and the ’79 Show

Paul Hollister described New Glass: A Worldwide Survey as “the most prestigious international display of glass seen in this country since Corning’s Glass 1959 show.” Prior to reviewing the exhibition for the New York Times and Collector Editions, Hollister tape-recorded his responses to the show as he progressed through its installation.    In the recording, he identifies and describes the work of many artists, including the Americans Howard Ben Tré, whose name was then unfamiliar to him, James Carpenter, Dominick Labino, Tom Patti, and Steven Weinberg, all of whom later became focused subjects of his writing. Hollister admired the international work submitted as well. In particular, he extolled Anthem of Joy, by Czech designer Věra Liškova. This flameworked sculpture, made of borosilicate glass tubing, became part of Corning’s collection and did not travel to other venues. Hollister described the work as “absolutely marvelous,” explaining, “I can see it sitting for five hundred years in some showcase in some castle. It’s a pure fairytale piece in the most imaginative type—just beautiful.”1 In a later interview with Liškova, Hollister remarked, “You are the only one of the older group of people…who is doing something that is new and that belongs to this time in the world.”2 This section includes an audio clip from their conversation.

1Paul Hollister. Excerpt from audio recording made at New Glass: A Worldwide Survey, April 11, 1979.

2Paul Hollister. Excerpt from recorded interview with Věra Liškova, Feb. 10, 1983.

Writings by Paul Hollister Bibliography

“New Glass at Corning.” Collector Editions 7, no. 4 (Fall 1979): 46–50.

PDF

 

“At Corning Glass Show, Sculptural Whimsy.” New York Times, April 26, 1979, C8.

Permalink: https://nyti.ms/2V2RmBW

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Paul Hollister Interview Transcript

Paul Hollister Recording for New Glass: A Worldwide Survey, April 11, 1979.

Paul Hollister records his observations while touring New Glass: A Worldwide Survey at The Corning Museum of Glass (1979).
(Rakow title: New Glass, Corning [sound recording] / with Paul Hollister, BIB ID: 168418)

In a 1983 interview with Paul Hollister, Věra Lišková discusses her work with Lobmeyr, the acquisition of her pieces by the Museum of Modern Art, and her influences.

Playing7:46 Transcript
Paul Hollister, Věra Lišková

In a 1983 interview with Paul Hollister, Věra Lišková discusses her work with Lobmeyr, the acquisition of her pieces by the Museum of Modern Art, and her influences. Interview with Věra Lišková by Paul Hollister, February 10, 1983. (Rakow title: Vera Liskova interview [sound recording] / with Paul Hollister, BIB ID: 167941) Clip length: 07:46.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Paul Hollister compliments Věra Lišková on her innovative work. Clip length: 01:07

Paul Hollister: Let me just say one thing to you at the beginning. I think from having seen your work at Corning in ‘79 and seeing it again here that—I’m not absolutely sure because I’d have to get all of my Czech catalogues out and look—that I think that you are the only person of the older generation, shall we say—not the young kids, the children between ages 25 and 35 and so forth—you are the only one of the older group of people, or the middle group of people, who is doing something that is new and that belongs to this time in the world.

Time stamp: 01:09
Clip 2: Věra Lišková talks about her time at Lobmeyr. Clip length: 00:52

Paul Hollister (PH): Did you speak German?

Věra Lišková (VL): I did. Very good. But I don’t have [the] occasion—

PH: To use it now. Hmm.

VL: Yeah. And I liked the [inaudible].

PH: Hmm.

VL: And this time, it was [a] very nice time. I [audible] this Lobmeyr the best because it was done for [a] king or the highest people. And every day it was every time one piece or one set so only the first cast nothing else. And so one day Mr. Rath, he came to me to ask, ‘Věra, don’t you want to try to make very simple sets—glass sets for new people?’

PH: Mm-hmm. This is Stephen Rath, is it? Of Lobmeyr?

VL: Stefan Rath. Yes.

PH: R-A-T-H. Yes, right. I know his son, Peter.

VL: No, it’s not [his] son. It was Hans. It was his son. And Peter and Harald, they are cousins.

PH: Cousins, okay. Cause I know Peter. He’s a very nice man.

VL: Yes. And Harald, both of them. They are very, very nice. Good. I shall have [an] exhibition next year.

PH: Oh, great. Great.

VL: I had [a] 6 year cycle at Lobmeyr.

PH: At Lobmeyr? 6 years with them. But we were talking about the fact that you were working in a factory, were you?

VL: No, I was not employed. Never.

PH: You were not allowed to work in a factory?

VL: No, no, no, no, no. Never.

PH: Never.

VL: I was the whole time at home. At first, it was from ‘46 to ‘48, I was working—I was studying in Prague, and time to time I was going to Lobmeyr to [inaudible] around and I was preparing [inaudible] and glass and vases and this and this and that. Many things.

PH: Mm-hmm. Designing them.

Time stamp: 03:57
Clip 3: Věra Lišková discusses the acquisition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art. Clip length: 02:22

Věra Lišková (VL): I was very, very happy at this time. At this time, I got the prize of our minister in Prague for this [inaudible] and I don’t know yet. I think that it’s changed in the Museum of Modern Art, but I [break in recording]—the first time here in ‘64. And I was very happy to see my pieces in the museum.

Paul Hollister (PH): When was the date that you first got into the museum? When was your stuff in the museum the first time? In the fitites?

VL: ‘54.

PH: ‘54.

VL: No, no, no, no, no. Excuse me. ‘64. Not 50—’64. ‘64.

PH: ‘64. Your things were included. They purchased them, did they? They bought them? The museum bought the piece, so it’s in their collection. Permanent collection.

VL: Yes.

PH: What, one or two or?

VL: No, it was more. It was more.

PH: Several pieces.

VL: But, I have been there two years ago in the Museum of Modern Art and because they built the new building, so all the things—all the art—

PH: Yeah, the [inaudible].

VL: [inaudible] no longer remains. Or who knows where? I don’t know. But I was very happy. Now, I don’t know, it seems to me that perhaps they had it somewhere, but they don’t have this applied art. It seems to me, I don’t know. Because for me, you know, it was the first exhibition I had. And now, I’m from opposite sides of the street since the last exhibition. It would be for me most nice to see somebody from the museum to cross the street and to come and see my work. But, I don’t know to whom to go.

Time stamp: 06:21
Clip 4: Věra Lišková talks about the ancient influences in her work. Clip length: 01:25

Paul Hollister (PH): Ah, I like the one, Grande Folie [spelling unknown]

Věra Lišková (VL): Ah, yes.

PH: And, incidentally, I have those glossy photographs—

VL: Mm-hmm.

PH: —that you lent me for The New York Times. Remember the three photographs?

VL: Yes.

PH: One of the rain and the other two of Grande Follie. Little picture. Big picture.

VL: Uh-huh.

PH: And I want to have slides made from those.

VL: Yes.

PH: With your permission, I want to do that because I have to give a talk in Canada, in May.

VL: Mm-hm

PH: —at a Canadian glass conference. And the title of my talk is ‘New and not so New.

VL: Mm-hmm.

PH: And I’m trying to, I wanted to show your pieces as new, you see.

VL: Yes. New, but from very, very, very old.

PH: Yes. Yes. From Florentine—Florentine medical glass. In Florence.

VL: It’s much older.

PH: In Florence. Well—at Rome. Even Rome.

VL: It’s, yeah. It’s—older. It’s Syria. [Inaudible] glass. [Inaudible] glass In Syria. In Egypt.

PH: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

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Paul Hollister talks about Howard Ben Tré’s work at the New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979) exhibition.

Playing1:35 Transcript
Paul Hollister

Paul Hollister talks about Howard Ben Tré’s work at the New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979) exhibition. Paul Hollister Recording for New Glass: A Worldwide Survey, April 11, 1979 (Rakow title: New Glass, Corning [sound recording] / with Paul Hollister, BIB ID: 168418). Clip length: 01:35.

Paul Hollister: [inaudible] [Burial] Box by Howard Ben Tré. B-E-N, separate word, T-R-E, at least it looks that way—of the United States. And it looks as if it were, it’s only about six inches square. It’s a cubed-shape receptacle, hollow receptacle with a square hollow in the center. It goes down—it’s not more than six inches in diameter or height. Slightly less in height than diameter—and it’s a square or an open cube as one might say, with four sort of columnar Art Deco corners to it with vertical column-like protuberances at the corners. But it looks as if it were made out of translucent cinderblock and with that title and that box, it’s about as imaginative and simple and timeless as a piece could be. And it might make a good black and white photo, though obviously not color. And it looks as if it had been left out in the rain in a part of a drain pipe mechanism or something like that. It’s absolutely [laughs] got every overtone imaginable and it is simple and yet awe-inspiring. One can see the ashes of the dead. It is the color of the ashes of the dead.

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International Connections

The international scope of the work selected for New Glass: A Worldwide Survey proved revelatory, introducing American audiences to artists from around the world. American artists later traveled to Europe to study with those whom they had first encountered at New Glass 1979. Gallerists, too—particularly those specializing in contemporary glass, such as Ferdinand Hampson, founder of Habatat Galleries, in Michigan, and New York’s Heller Gallery cofounder Douglas Heller—made important connections with international artists at the exhibition. These new networks had a lasting impact on the range and quality of contemporary art glass exhibited and collected in the United States.

Douglas Heller talks about working more with European artists after seeing the Corning ‘79 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

01:37 Transcript

Douglas Heller talks about working more with European artists after seeing the Corning ‘79 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oral history interview with Doug Heller by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 27, 2018, Heller Gallery. Clip length: 01:36.

Doug Heller: So we looked down in SoHo, and we found wonderful classic cast-iron space on Green Street, that was a photographer’s flea market. And we met a very interesting landlord who was open to something new because we still were something odd and didn’t have the type of credentials he was used to. And he was Peter Max’s uncle, and he liked the idea of something quirky; and we were definitely quirky, you know. So we took this space and that changed things considerably, this was suddenly from these small boutique spaces of 900 to maybe 1200 feet. We were in 3000 square feet with a 2700 square foot downstairs, half of which was finished, and we were holding different types of exhibitions. The work changed dramatically and also the range of artists that we represented changed. We started to work more with the Europeans after being exposed to this great landmark show from the Metropolitan Museum of Art called New Glass: A Worldwide Survey 1979, and I believe there were glassmakers from 60 different countries there. I went up to the opening of that show and truly had an epiphany after seeing the work that I didn’t know existed, you know, a level of sophistication, a level of scale. And I drove back from up state just transfixed with what we could do next.

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Douglas Heller discusses learning about a Czech artist through the Corning ‘79 show, whom he later represented.

01:03 Transcript

Douglas Heller discusses learning about a Czech artist through the Corning ‘79 show, whom he later represented. Oral history interview with Doug Heller by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 27, 2018, Heller Gallery. Clip length: 01:02.

Doug Heller: When I went to that show at Corning that I called New Glass 1979, the one that was an epiphany for me. There were objects in that show by Czech glassmaker, named Frantisek Vizner, who I later represented—just several of them came up in auction at Rago—that were very physical, bowl-like forms carved out of blocks of glass, that if you went to pick up must have weighed 18, 20 pounds. I mean, they were hefty things, very tangible, and yet he did something with the edges and with the surface treatments that made them seem to dissolve and merge into the space around them. So it—you couldn’t quite decipher where the physical ended and just space began, and they were to me sublime objects, you know, transcendent objects. And yet big and heavy, you know, so I can see wonder in physical things.

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Dwight Lanmon discusses founding Corning Director Thomas Buechner’s importance to the studio glass movement.

Playing01:04 Transcript
Dwight Lanmon

Dwight Lanmon discusses The Corning Museum’s founding Director Thomas Buechner and the studio glass movement. Oral history interview with Dwight Lanmon by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:04.

Dwight Lanmon: You know, so Bill [William] Warmus and Susanne [Frantz] are really the people that were involved at that point and Tom Buechner. I mean, don’t forget Tom Buechner, who I think is really central to the success of the studio glass movement. Tom as president when I went there as chief curator, he established a policy that we spent half of our money, half of all the acquisitions funds went to contemporary glass. And the other half went to the entire history of glass, so, and we only had like a hundred thousand dollars a year at that point—to make acquisitions. So fifty-thousand was devoted to contemporary glass and then very important, I think, in the development of the recognition of contemporary glass, of sculpture was not only Glass ’79, the exhibition, but starting The New Glass Review, which was Tom Buechner’s baby. Tom really started that and carried it.

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Ferdinand (Ferd) Hampson, founder of Habatat Gallery, discusses networking with artists from Eastern Europe at the Corning ‘79 show.

Playing01:20 Transcript
Ferdinand (Ferd) Hampson

Ferdinand Hampson, founder of Habatat Gallery, discusses networking with artists from Eastern Europe at the Corning ‘79 show. Oral history interview with Ferdinand Hampson by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, January 31, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:20.

Ferdinand Hampson: However, in Europe—well, I’ll tell you a funny story. We used to do postcards for our exhibitions and we would send them out all over the world. And it was mainly my partner’s idea to do this. I had a partner at the time, and I pictured people getting them—just like throwing them on the streets of Paris and then watching people walk on them. I mean, because we never get any response back from anybody and never—you know? So I thought, ‘That’s probably a real waste of time.’ Well, 1979, I came to the opening of that Corning New Glass show. And, I mean, I’m a kid, you know? Waiting for us are all these people from communist governments, artists that are renowned translators that are telling to—representing their countries. And we had, like, a lineup. I mean, I went to go to the party and all of a sudden I was just like working all the way to like two in the morning with appointments with people. And so there’s kind of—was kind of the start of it all.

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Mary Shaffer discusses the Corning ‘79 exhibition and its international artists.

Playing01:50 Transcript
Mary Shaffer

Mary Shaffer discusses the Corning ‘79 exhibition and its international artists. Oral history interview with Mary Shaffer by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 21, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:45.

Mary Shaffer: Well, that was earlier. Exhibition—oh, that was an incredible—that was done by Bill [William] Warmus and he’s actually doing a report on that now and that was ’79. The Corning show was like the first show where Americans glassmakers from all across the country got to meet each other, like Marvin Lipofsky and people on the East Coast, the West Coast. And we all met each other. And international ones and that’s when I was first introduced in ‘79 to these Czech artists that I then went to visit [a year] later because I had this grant and could go. And [Stanislov] Libenský was amazing. I mean, he was such a big influence on people and still is. I mean I think Lino [Tagliapietra] is the pretty glass. The virtuoso kind of thing. And Libenský was much more of a sculptor and concept—he wasn’t a conceptual artist, but I’m sure you know his pieces—those last pieces he made, the angels. I mean, he was sick. You know, he had this bad, bad cancer and he was making these angels of death which were so powerful. You know, even before he realized, and his wife realized that he was sick and they both became very close friends of mine. I met them and stayed with them and he said, ‘Mary, I love your work. I want you to come here,’ and actually after he died, [Jaroslava] Brychtová [his wife] said, ‘Why don’t you take over our studio?’ You know, ‘Why don’t you come here, live here, and take over the studio?’ I mean, what an opportunity—but I never had enough money to do stuff like that.

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Mary Shaffer’s Hanging Series #15, 1977. Plate glass bound by wires, slumped, Overall H: 43.3 cm, W: 303 cm. In New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979), p. 208. Image courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

New Glass Review

In 1980, to maintain the momentum generated by New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (1979), the Corning Museum launched a new journal titled New Glass Review. Published annually, it has served ever since as an exhibition in print, documenting one hundred new works in glass produced during the previous year by artists, craftspeople, and designers around the world. Following an open call for submissions, panels of selectors choose the pieces to be showcased in the journal. Discussions about such a publication had been underway since 1975, when Thomas Buechner, the museum’s founding director and by then the president of Corning’s Steuben Glass division, introduced the idea. New Glass 79 provided the perfect opportunity to begin the initiative. Museum curators with expertise in modern and contemporary glass, including William Warmus, Susanne Frantz, Tina Oldknow, and Susie Silbert, have solicited panelists, chaired the selection process, and edited the publication. Buechner himself participated in the selection process for two decades.

Cover. New Glass Review 1 (1980). Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 37677).

New Glass Review 1 (1980), p. 13. Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 37677).

New Glass Review 1 (1980), p. 12. Collection of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 37677).

New Glass Now (2019)

In 2019, The Corning Museum of Glass marked six decades of support for contemporary glass with New Glass Now. The exhibition, organized by Susie Silbert, Corning’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Glass since 2016, showcased work by a new generation of glass artists and designers. Silbert employed the same selection process used in the museum’s two previous exhibitions, appointing a panel of evaluators to choose work following a global open call for submissions. Aric Chen, then curator of Hong Kong’s M+ museum; Susanne Jøker Johnsen, exhibitions head at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; American artist Beth Lipman; and Silbert herself together selected contemporary works by one hundred artists representing thirty-two nationalities and more than twenty-five countries. Many of the glass objects, installations, videos, and performances presented in the show addressed complex cultural issues, such as sexual identity, gender inequality, and environmental degradation. An accompanying exhibit, New Glass Now: Context, curated by Silbert with Colleen McFarland Rademaker, Associate Librarian for Special Collections at Corning’s Rakow Research Library, highlighted the history of all three exhibitions. The fortieth-anniversary issue of New Glass Review doubled as the New Glass Now exhibition catalogue.

New Glass Now (May 12, 2019-January 5, 2020), Installation view, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Tamás Ábel, Colour Therapy: Washington, D.C. + Budapest, Exhibited in New Glass Now (May 12, 2019-January 5, 2020, 2019). Collection of The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (2019.7.8).

Susie Silbert talks about the impetus for the New Glass Now exhibition.

01:10 Transcript

Susie Silbert talks about the impetus for the New Glass Now exhibition. Oral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:09.

Susie Silbert: I’d love to say that I had the show—the idea for the show all by myself without any help from my friends, but actually the idea for the show comes from the history of the institution and the history of the field of contemporary glass itself. So The Corning Museum of Glass organized the first major survey of contemporary glass anywhere in the world in 1959. It was called Glass 1959, and the show is the show that gave the field its name. Like, it was the first time that designers and proto-studio glass makers from around the world really thought of themselves as part of something greater. And it is the exhibition that laid the groundwork—I think of it like laying a fertile soil for the explosion of studio glass just a couple of years later. In 1979 that museum reprised the exhibition in New Glass Worldwide Survey, which traveled across the country and traveled globally and brought the idea of artists working with the material to new audiences. And so, knowing that it was the fortieth anniversary and 2019, I wanted to do a show that would similarly catalyze new opportunities in the field of contemporary glass.

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Susie Silbert discusses New Glass Now engaging queer glass.

02:16 Transcript

Susie Silbert discusses New Glass Now engaging queer glass. Oral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:15.

Susie Silbert: One of the works in New Glass Now, although directly dealt with LGBTQIA issues, it was a video and an object by Hungarian artist Tamash Abel who is very young. And he made a reflective pride flag mirror using traditional Hungarian glass laminating techniques which he then took to the National Monument in Budapest and to the Washington Monument in DC and reflected the pride flag right onto those monuments. I think are really like delicate, subtle, and beautiful statement of presence for the queer communities in both those spaces. And that piece is a very overt—embrace, I think, of the queer community. There are other pieces in the show that are more nuanced in that queerness of their work. But it was only in putting this exhibition together that I realized that—as far as I know, and I don’t know everything—I can’t think of another time in the history of glass and a major exhibition setting where there had been a discussion of queerness or queer glass, and I thought that that was like, crazy, you know, given that in ceramics and textiles and jewelry, queering the material has been part of that process since the sixties, and then again in the 2000s and late nineties. So I am super happy to have provided a space where those conversations can begin to happen, and it’s nice to see that some of that has been embraced in other parts of the glass community. And my hope is that this exhibition and subsequent exhibitions and subsequent displays can make a more inclusive space in glass for queer folk and for all different kinds of—all different kinds of expressions and all different kinds of people. What I wanted with that exhibition and what I think I was successful with, was to create a place where there was room for everyone, not just all different kinds of makers, but also all different kinds of viewers, and I hope that that carries forward too.

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Susie Silbert talks about Thomas Buechner’s Corning ‘79 “New Glass method” of selectors.

Playing2:37 Transcript
Susie Silbert

Susie Silbert talks about Thomas Buechner’s Corning ‘79 “New Glass method” of selectors. Oral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:36.

Susie Silbert: So I chose the idea of having a panel of selectors, and I also chose the notion of putting their initials on it. Not at all out of originality, but really out of this reverence for the method, this new glass method that was innovated by the museum’s founding director, Tom Buechner, for Glass 1959, and then carried forward through New Glass Worldwide Survey, and then in every year of New Glass Review. And I think it was really a stroke of brilliance that he came up with a notion—having a panel, a panel of selectors, and not just that, but to make sure that they were not this disembodied voice. This word from on high, but to even in the 1959 show delineate their choices with their initials. And—as the more that I researched that process, the more that I thought that it was really important for a couple of reasons. In this 2019 show for me, what’s really important is to create new opportunities, new entries into the field of contemporary glass, which can be seen—can seem like a closed circuit, and I want the field to be bigger. I want people to come in, and so I think that by putting not just the selectors’ initials but their full names, and not only their full names, but actual quotes from them as the gallery text, what I hope is that the people that come to visit the exhibition see that they don’t have to like everything, which most exhibitions you sort of feel like you’re supposed to because they’re the result of his curatorial research practice. But here, I am showing that maybe sometimes only one person selected the thing and so if you don’t like it, you don’t—that’s fine. You’re doing it—you’re doing it right. That’s part of it. And then the other reason is, it would be so much easier—it really would’ve been so much easier for me to curate an exhibition by myself of 100 works that I think encapsulate contemporary glass as it is right now. It would’ve been much more straightforward, I would’ve had it done earlier, but at the same time it would’ve been so much easier to dismiss because it was just my viewpoint. But inviting a range of other people who I chose for their differences of approach and also the way they overlap with me, I could ensure that we have a much more—a much richer, a much more varied, layered perspectives on what contemporary glass is, and I think that makes it a much stronger statement. It makes it a much more important exhibition. It’s more than I could say on my own.

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Susie Silbert discusses the “selectors” she chose for New Glass Now.

Playing1:38 Transcript
Susie Silbert

Susie Silbert discusses the “selectors” she chose for New Glass NowOral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:37.

Susie Silbert: You know, it’s an interesting thing, this idea of whether they’re jurors or selectors or guest curators or whatever. In the 1959 show that methodology was so new that they didn’t even use the term ‘juror,’ and the idea that there could be any women on this panel was so outside of the realm that the museum—and in the catalog they’re just referred to as ‘the gentlemen.’ So I think of it, I tried to get away from the word ‘juror,’ because I think ‘jury’ mostly we use that in a binary sense. It’s guilty, not guilty, and my experience of going through this new glass process where everybody is looking at the work together and conversing about it is much less binary. It’s much more the result of conversations, and it’s not like, you know, it’s good, not good. So, anyway, the selectors are Aric Chen, who is a design writer and curator at large at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong for visual culture. Susanne Jøker Johnsen, who is a glass maker with a really fine attention to craft, but also a curator in Denmark who does the biennial exhibitions, European Glass Context and European Ceramic Context. And then Beth Lipman, who’s an artist whose practice is rooted in glass but is much more expensive than that, from Wisconsin. And so each of them, you know, Beth with an attention to art, Suzanne especially with an attention to craft, Aric with an attention to design, really created this layered approach that I was looking for.

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New Glass Now | Context (May 12, 2019-June 1, 2020), Installation view, The Rakow Research Library at The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Susie Silbert discusses New Glass Now | Context, a show with The Rakow Library

02:47 Transcript

Susie Silbert discusses New Glass Now | Context, a show with The Rakow Library. Oral history interview with Susie Silbert by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:47.

Susie Silbert: The exhibition New Glass Now | Context at the Rakow Research Library [Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York] that I curated with our archivist Colleen McFarland Rademaker is an exhibition that we approached really to talk about what these two shows meant for the field of contemporary glass, but also what they meant to the museum and to its formation. And the answer is that it really meant a lot. Glass 1959 was one of the first exhibitions the museum did of contemporary glass, it was certainly the largest, most comprehensive one, and it marked this turning point in the museum from its founding in 1951 looking at old glass—Renaissance, Venetian, early American—to thinking about itself as an actor in the field, and it allowed itself to stake a claim for the field because it coalesced the idea of contemporary glass as an area of practice. The 1979 show did the same thing, really put the museum at the vanguard in part because in forming that exhibition, the museum invited in the studio glass artist; many of them talk about how it is the first time they ever really felt invited by the museum to participate in the creation. So we were interested in this exhibition and looking at our own history, now that the museum is approaching its 75th anniversary, but also to think about the ways that this particular selection process which the museum has undertaken for the last now 41 years in the publication New Glass Review, which does what those exhibitions did in publication form each year. And this particular way of looking really informs how people see the field and what is—what is shown, and how people think about it, and I find it to be totally fascinating. And looking at the history of these exhibitions you see the way that that way of looking changed. So for 1959 where they were seeing the physical objects, to 1979 where they were seeing slides primarily, and then some of the physical objects, and now to mostly a digital process that becomes physical printouts later. And it changes what you choose and what gets seen. For instance, in the process in the 1979 show or today, looking at the dematerialized image of the things, we would never be able to choose 92 clear goblets, we simply wouldn’t be able to tell that they were different enough to choose. So that is also what that exhibition is about, it is about a way of seeing, this particular way of seeing that I call the ‘new glass method.’ And then how that way of seeing has informed and shaped the landscape for contemporary glass.

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The Great Paperweight Show

In the mid-1970s, Dwight Lanmon, then chief curator  at The Corning Museum of Glass, invited Paul Hollister to co-curate an exhibition of nineteenth-century paperweights. The Great Paperweight Show, on view at the Corning Museum April 29–October 21, 1978,  featured 375 nineteenth-century weights showcasing “perfect technology and breathtaking design,”3 together with twenty-nine contemporary weights and related objects. Lanmon and Hollister also authored the accompanying 167-page exhibition catalogue, Paperweights: “Flowers Which Clothe the Meadows.” The title echoes Renaissance-era wonder over the Venetian colored glass cane technique known as millefiori, expressed in Italian historian Marcantonio Sabellico’s fifteenth-century invitation to “consider to whom did it first occur to include in a little ball all the sorts of flowers which clothe the meadows in the spring.”4 A catalogue supplement featured the contemporary examples, including pieces by established paperweight makers Paul Stankard and Debbie Tarsitano, as well as artists not primarily associated with the form, such as Richard Ritter and Tom Patti.

3Dwight Lanmon in conversation with Catherine Whalen, August 5, 2019.

4Paul M. Hollister and Dwight P. Lanmon, Paperweights: “Flowers Which Clothe the Meadows.” (Corning, N.Y.: Corning Museum of Glass, 1978), p.13.

Paperweights: “Flowers Which Clothe the Meadows (1978) exhibition catalogue for The Great Paperweight Show. Image courtesy of The Rakow Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 20097).

Detail of Millefiori Vase, Cristallerie de Clichy; manufacturer, 1845-1850. Overall H: 29 cm, Diam (max): 17.9 cm. Collection of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Gift of Jane and Jack Sexton. (2011.3.139).

 

Millefiori Vase, Cristallerie de Clichy; manufacturer, 1845-1850. Overall H: 29 cm, Diam (max): 17.9 cm. Collection of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Gift of Jane and Jack Sexton. (2011.3.139).

 

Paul Hollister Interview Transcript

Paul Hollister and Dwight Lanmon Lectures, May 17, 1986.

Paul Hollister and Dwight Lanmon give lectures on paperweights for Wheaton Village (later Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center).
(Rakow title: Wheaton [sound recording] / Paul Hollister, BIB ID: 167926)

Writings by Paul Hollister Bibliography

“Paperweights and Related Objects Included in ‘The Great Paperweight Show,’ Not Listed in the Catalogue.” Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass, 1978.

PDF

“The Great Paperweight Show at Corning.” Collector Editions 6, no. 3 (Summer 1978): pp. 28-29.

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The Great Paperweight Show (April 29-October 21, 1978), Installation view, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

The Great Paperweight Show (April 29-October 21, 1978), Installation view, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

“At Corning [Paul Hollister] worked with Dwight Lanmon. [Hollister] was a major contributor in the aesthetics. I’m sure Dwight would agree that he contributed in no small way to that exhibition at Corning, which turned out to be the most-attended exhibition in the museum’s exhibit history up until that point. [Many] people attend[ed] the seminar, much more than any other seminar. It was huge—very, very popular.”

Paul Stankard

Paul Stankard talks about Paul Hollister working with Dwight Lanmon on Paperweights: “Flowers which clothe the meadows.”

01:27 Transcript

Paul Stankard talks about Paul Hollister working with Dwight Lanmon on Paperweights: “Flowers which clothe the meadow.” Oral history interview with Paul Stankard, March 22, 2018, Stankard Studio, Mantua, New Jersey. Clip length: 01:27.

Paul Stankard: We all grew up together. I mean, you know, as a community you get to—over the course of twenty years, the friendships, you’re nurturing a friendship that all of a sudden is comfortable. [laughs] So, that’s early, early Paul Hollister. He curated a show at the—this may be old news—but he juried a show that was one of the most successful shows at the Corning Glass Museum [The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York]. Flowers that Clothe the Meadows, and it was a paperweight show. And he was one the—he was involved with Dwight Lanmon. Dwight Lanmon was deputy director of the Corning Glass Museum. And Dwight asked Paul Hollister and Paul Jokelson to be involved in this show. And I was really—I knew this show was in progress because Dwight Lanmon would visit the Paperweight Collectors Association conventions and look at the antique French. I was amazed at the amount of scholarship Dwight Lanmon brought to mount this exhibition on paperweights. And Paul Hollister contributed his knowledge, and Paul Jokelson contributed. And it was a beautiful show.

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Dwight Lanmon discusses his and Paul Hollister’s work on selecting paperweights for The Great Paperweight Show, contemporary weights in the exhibition, and the accompanying Corning Seminar.

Transcript
Dwight Lanmon

Dwight Lanmon discusses his and Paul Hollister’s work on selecting paperweights for The Great Paperweight show, contemporary weights in the exhibition, and the accompanying Corning Seminar. Oral history interview with Dwight Lanmon by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 04:51.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Dwight Lanmon discusses how his and Paul Hollister’s taste aligned while selecting paperweights for Corning’s Great Paperweight Show. Clip length: 01:24.

Dwight Lanmon: We traveled throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic states talking to paperweight collectors, and it was always sort of interesting non-stop conversation as we were driving around. And what was interesting to me is that we never disagreed about which paperweights to include. When I didn’t like something, he didn’t like it, and vice versa. So we were well attuned to each other’s taste in terms of the paperweights we wanted to show. And as I said in the long section of discussion about the show, our aim was to show the greatest paperweights we could find. And that meant two things: artistically and technically. And—you know—you could have a beautiful weight that had a serious flaw, like a flower that had a petal out of place—or something. And we thought that wrecked it. Even though the paperweight might have been beautiful, if you looked at it closely, and most people would only see them in the book, it would be a defect, and we tried as best we could not to have any paperweights with visual defects.

Time stamp: 01:27
Clip 2: Dwight Lanmon discusses his and Paul Hollister’s commitment to making serious contributions to paperweight scholarship. Clip length: 01:28.

Dwight Lanmon: It was serious scholarship, first of all, and that has always been important to me, as opposed to, ‘Isn’t that pretty?’ And Paul really looked at them, and tried to figure out what they were, and talked about them aesthetically and technically in the catalog. And he and I met, I had met Paul, I don’t know how, but, early on in my career at Corning, and I just thought, ‘Well, what we want to do is not only show the greatest paperweights, but also make a serious contribution to understanding paperweights.’ So in addition to the catalog, the Flowers catalog, I measured the density of every weight in the show, and—so that we could begin to classify things technically. And also I did ultraviolet of every one and so it became a big joke that Lanmon could only tell where a paperweight was made when the lights are out. And looking at things under ultraviolet, but I did find that there were lots of things that simply were not true, that had been published in the past in terms of attribution. So there is a density chart for almost every paperweight that is shown in the catalog. And so as I say, we were trying to take the study and understanding of paperweights to a new level when we did the show.

Time stamp:0 2:52
Clip 3: Dwight Lanmon discusses pieces in The Great American Paperweight Show that weren’t in the catalogue. Clip length: 00:48.

Dwight Lanmon: So there are sixty-eight additional pieces that were not in the catalog that were in the show. There are a lot of early things we tried to put paperweights into perspective. We had a sixteenth, seventeenth century tazza from Venice, an ewer—same date. Roman millefiori plaques, Roman filigree bowl [inaudible]. So there are a lot of ancient things, but then a lot of contemporary. We had one exhibition case that was entirely full of contemporary weight makers. Nick [Dominick] Labino paperweight that was lent by Nick. Max Erlacher a piece that he did. Andy [Andre] Bellici, Ray Banford, Bob Banford, all lent by the artists. Debbie Tarsitano, lent by [Paul] Jokelson. Paul Ysart lent by Jokelson.

Time stamp: 03:43
Clip 4: Dwight Lanmon talks about the Corning Seminar on The Great Paperweight Show. Clip length: 01:08.

Dwight Lanmon: Well, I never heard anybody criticize the exhibition or the catalog, and the glass seminars at Corning, the annual seminar, one of the first ones that we did that was a special subject seminar after I went there as chief curator, was the 1978 program at—which we did entirely on paperweights and on related things, millefiori and that sort of thing. And it was, as I recall, it was the largest attendance that we’d ever had, and before I went to the museum and they had these general seminars, you’d get 30, 40 people, and it would typically be the same people year after year, which was great because you got to know the people. But I think for the paperweight seminar we had like 145 show up, so it was a huge difference and that was for me, very heartening. And encouraging, so they wanted to see the show, and a lot of the lenders were there for the seminar, and then some pieces came to the museum afterwards as gifts, that were in the show, that were privately held. So that was pleasing to me, as well.

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Rethinking Paperweights

The Great Paperweight Show generated new scholarship and methods of documenting weights. Lanmon, with a background in physics, used ultraviolet light to determine the density of the paperweights in the exhibition—something never before done with weights. After the catalogue was published, Lanmon, on a trip to Paris to return objects borrowed for the exhibition, discovered that the lifelike lizard paperweights featured in the show had been made at the Cristallerie de Pantin. Paperweight maker Victor Trabucco, a consultant to Lanmon, later created his own versions of these mysterious weights.

The Houghton Salamander, probably Cristallerie de Pantin; manufacturer, 1878. Glass paperweight. Overall H: 8.8 cm, Diam (max): 11.5 cm. Collection of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Gift of the Honorable and Mrs. Amory Houghton. (55.3.79).

 

Victor Trabucco, Super Magnum Lizard, 2001. Glass paperweight. Diam: 5 in. Image courtesy of Victor Trabucco.

“And then in 1990, I was the first one to make the lizard. And that was one of the mysteries of lampworking. The two big mysteries for lampworkers were the Pantin lizard and the Blaschka flowers [Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, Harvard University]. Actually, I kind of picked up where they left off because I’ve improved some of the techniques that they use in making that lizard weight. And that was in 1990, and then just recently I just started making those Blaschka-type flowers, and I think I’ve discovered the technique that they really used to create those.”

Victor Trabucco

Dwight Lanmon talks about attributing lizard paperweights to the Pantin factory.

Playing02:39 Transcript
Dwight Lanmon

Dwight Lanmon talks about attributing lizard paperweights to the Pantin factory. Oral history interview with Dwight Lanmon by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:39.

Dwight Lanmon: The other thing we tried to do, which I did not point out is there was one class of paperweights, which we called the lizards, and those paperweights are, for me, the highest technical achievement of paperweight making. These are the lifelike lizards with flowers and flowering bushes and so forth, encased in glass. They’re all very big. Nobody knew who made them, it was always thought it was one of the big three factories, and I just thought that was not the case, but what we tried to do was to get every known example for the show, and that was the only category in the show where we tried to get every example, and every one of them was a technical masterpiece. And if you, like lizards they’re interesting aesthetically, and if you don’t like lizards you’d probably hate them, but I felt that they were technically an achievement that was beyond what any other paperweight maker had made. And finally working with Tim Clark after the show, and Tim was the paperweight expert at Sotheby’s, he and I met in Paris [France] as I was returning the weights from the show, and we went to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, which is, I don’t know if you know the museum if you haven’t been there put it on your list, it’s an amazing place. The Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. And their collection was to document manufacture, and so they received gifts from paperweight makers in the 19th century, and so these are well documented weights that we know exactly what they were called, who made them, when they were made and so forth. But I found on one of the shelves a snake. Just a lampwork snake, with a facet cutting on the body. And it was clear that it was the same maker who made the lizards, which also many of them have facet-cut bodies. But this was not encased in a paperweight, and looking at their records I realized it was the Cristallerie de Pantin that made the snake, and so that documented all the rest of them, and so I was finally able to put to rest who made them, and I published that in the Paperweight Collectors Association Bulletin.

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Victor Trabucco speaks about Dwight Lanmon consulting with him on antique paperweight-making techniques and Lanmon’s discovery of Pantin as the maker of lizard paperweights.

Playing02:41 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco speaks about Dwight Lanmon consulting with him on antique paperweight-making techniques and Lanmon’s discovery of Pantin as the maker of lizard paperweights. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:41.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Victor Trabucco speaks about Dwight Lanmon consulting with him about antique paperweight-making techniques. Clip length: 01:39.

Victor Trabucco: I’ll tell you that my opinion on some of the things that Paul Jokelson would say and state—and I think this was true of all the paperweight experts, let’s say, they had some misconceptions of how things were really done. And what was advanced, and what wasn’t. I remember Dwight Lanmon, who was a big supporter of form, and what we did. And he came to my studio and spent a day here with me, and he was going through a lot of images of the antique paperweights, and he was asking me what was, you know, great accomplishments and what wasn’t. And I went item for item, I went through and I pointed out the different techniques. And in fact that he was so impressed with what I had told him, he felt armed enough that when he gave his next speech at one of the PCA meetings—Paperwork Collectors Association meetings, that he felt as though the work that was being done today was the second golden age of paperweight making. And at that point, it was always just the French antique weights. So we were kind of second-class citizens. So he finally, after pointing out some of the techniques, at some of the things that we’ve done, how much we had pushed the techniques and advancement of that stuff, the process, and so he felt confident with the information that I gave him that he could make statements like that, and he also asked me to be a technical consultant for him when he was going to write a book. Of course, he left Corning before he did that, but that was still quite a nice honor.

Time stamp: 01:42
Clip 2: Victor Trabucco talks about Dwignt Lanmon’s discovery of Pantin as the maker of lizard paperweights. Clip length: 00:58.

Victor Trabucco: And so—in fact, he’s [Dwight Lanmon] the one that actually discovered and gave credit to who made the lizard weight, because before his presence in the field, it was always known as the unknown French Factory. They didn’t know where those, those lizard weights were made. And what he did when he was in France, there was a museum and he went down through some of their collection that was, I think, in storage. And he found this snake that was carved, and you could, if you looked at the face of the snake and the face on the lizard, you could see it was done by the same hand. But the snake head was documented, that was made by Pantin and what year it was made and everything, so there was documentation of it. And from that he surmised that those weights were made at the Pantin Factory so, from that point on, that’s why they were credited with that factory. Before that, it was just called the unknown factory.

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Glass of the Caesars

Cover. Glass of the Caesars (1987) exhibition catalogue. Image courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. (CMGL 31831).

In April 1987, The Corning Museum of Glass debuted Glass of the Caesars, an exhibition of 161 objects—from cups and bowls to lamps and figures—representing the primary types of glass and glassworking techniques used in the Roman Empire between about 100 BC and AD 500. Accompanied by a 340-page catalogue of the same name, the show was jointly organized by The Corning Museum, the British Museum in London, and the Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Cologne, Germany. It traveled to London, Cologne, and the Museo Capitolino in Rome after closing at Corning in October 1987. Glass of the Caesars was a landmark exhibition that influenced artists, curators, and researchers for years to come; a two-day symposium at the British Museum in 2017 marked the show’s thirtieth anniversary.

Several studio glass artists found the exhibition especially influential. Dan Dailey and Lino Tagliapietra’s collaborative series Dailey/Tagliapietra was directly inspired by the show. Dailey found the spontaneity and looseness of the objects fascinating, and he recalls poring over the exhibition catalogue with Tagliapietra. Michael Glancy was similarly taken with Glass of the Caesars and remembers Paul Hollister introducing him to ancient glass in Hollister’s home library five years before the show opened. Hollister wrote several feature articles on Glancy and compared the artist’s glass forms to Sasanian and Persian vessels.

“The Sasanian pieces were just a gong, you know, and Paul shared that with me. That was terrific.”

Michael Glancy
Writings by Paul Hollister Bibliography

“Michael Glancy’s Glass and Metal Objects: Prunkstücke fürs Kuriositäten-Kabinett / Treasures for the Cabinet of Curiosities.” Neues Glas, no. 1 (1982): 38–44.

PDF

“The Matrix Transformed.” American Craft 42, no. 4 (August/September 1982): 24–27.

Full issue: https://digital.craftcouncil.org/digital/collection/p15785coll2/id/16745/rec/223

American Craft Council, Digital File Vol42No04_Aug1982

PDF

Michael Glancy’s Glass and Metal Objects: Treasures for the Cabinet of Curiosities/Prunkstücke für’s Kuriositäten-Kabinett.” Neues Glas, no. 1 (1982): p 38.

“The Matrix Transformed.” American Craft 42, no. 4 (August/September 1982): p. 26.

Glass of the Caesars (April 24-October 15, 1987), Installation view, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

“…five years later, in 1987, was the Glass of the Caesars show at The Corning Museum. I was enamored with diatreta vases, Roman cage cup pieces, and this show, Glass of the Caesars, brought together, I think 13 of these pieces from all over the world. And these pieces had never been seen together–ever–until this exhibition, and that motivated me to spend countless hours working on a single piece. I mean, there are times when I think–you have to be very careful not to work just to work; you have to work towards a goal. And you can always overwork a piece, and it goes from getting better and better and better to a certain point, and then it’ll get worse, and so you have to stop at some point. But the diatreta and the cage cup pieces really inspired me. And then I saw this piece from Pompeii, a faceted beaker that I consider to be proportionally one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen, and to this day remains a reference for me for perfection and for my own goal of trying to reach a certain level of perfection, which is unattainable. Therefore we go for it, you know?”

Michael Glancy

Glass of the Caesars (April 24-October 15, 1987), Installation view, Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Michael Glancy discusses Paul Hollister’s article on Glancy in which he compares Glancy’s work to “Sasanian and Islamic wheel-cut Persian vessels.”

Playing02:01 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy discusses Paul Hollister’s article on Glancy in which he compares Glancy’s work to “Sasanian and Islamic wheel-cut Persian vessels.” Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:01.

Michael Glancy: August/September ’82, he actually says, ‘Who would have thought’—these are his, Paul Hollister’s, words—‘Who would have thought, for example, that the young American glassblower Michael Glancy had no familiarity with Sasanian and Islamic wheel-cut Persian vessels of the sixth to tenth century, which appear to have influenced his work.’ Now, I can remember, you know, going to Paul’s apartment in New York to be interviewed, and Paul was like, really excited, you know, and it was a guarded excitement, cause he had these Sasanian books, and he wanted to know if I knew about this work. And 1982, no, I did not know about this work. And to me it was a major epiphany and validation that what I was doing—I was emulating my—my mentor was really Maurice Marinot, from the 1920s, and so this actually pre-dated Marinot and in my mind, this was inspiration for Marinot and possibly Art Deco. I mean, as a student, I was searching for things that would resonate with me as a practitioner. This resonated in a gigantic way. And Paul goes on to say that I was traveling a lot and taking a lot of influences, including Maurice Marinot, but it was a particular—he was so excited to share this. And I was excited for the information, for sure.

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Michael Glancy talks about Paul Hollister teaching him to make connections to his own work through ancient glass.

Playing01:00 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy talks about Paul Hollister teaching him to make connections to his own work through ancient glass. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:00.

Michael Glancy: And so that connection allowed me to realize that there are a lot of potential connections, and that we should all look for those, you know, and so I have. And I’ve found a lot of them through ancient glass, but this article by Paul is really pretty good cause he sort of talks about, you know, I’m influenced by everything from the Islamic glass to the Roman pieces to the pattern on a tire, on a Michelin tire on a Ferrari, or—you know, all sorts of things. And that’s all true. None of them really are as potent as the ancient stuff for me.

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The Corning Museum of Glass: 21st Century

The Corning Museum of Glass: 21st Century

The Corning Museum of Glass has continued to thrive and expand over the last two decades. Renovation projects in 2001 and 2015 added more space for research, exhibitions, public programs, and retail. The expanded facilities include an award-winning Innovation Center, where hands-on interactive displays focus on glass science and technology, and a 26,000-square-foot Contemporary Art + Design Wing dedicated to presenting contemporary art in glass. The museum has created new artist residencies as well, with programs that support increasing diversity among glass artists and encourage the use of Corning’s historical research collections and specialty glass materials. A trailer truck outfitted as a mobile hot shop has enabled the museum to take glassmaking to parks and museums around the country, engaging new audiences in the art of glass.

Glassblowing Demonstration, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Vessels Gallery in The Innovation Center, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Contemporary Art + Design Galleries, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Mobile Hot Shop, The Corning Museum of Glass. Image courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.