Watkins Glen, NY to Jamestown, NY (Hwy 414 to Corning, I-86 to Jamestown)
Central New York is in the thrall of a panoply of color as the season unfolds across the hills and valleys of New York. Pictures don’t do the display justice, especially on a rainy day.
About 20 miles southwest of Watkins Glen is the village of Corning, long a center of the glass manufacturing industry in the United States. Corning was first settled in 1796 in a narrow valley threaded by the Chemung River and grew slowly throughout the next century as a small center of mills powered by the rushing waters. The pivotal moment in the development of Corning occurred in 1868 when the Brooklyn Flint Glass Company moved to the town to take advantage of its proximity to the coal of Pennsylvania (needed to fire the furnaces so crucial to glass manufacturing) and the town’s key location on a transportation network of rivers and railroads. The company was renamed the Corning Glass Works and the rest is history. By 1905 over 2,500 glass blowers, cutters and engravers worked at the Corning Glass Works and 15 other glass producers in Corning and it was christened the “Crystal City.” A combination of narrow streets and heavy rain precluded my exploration of the village but did not stop me from one of the headliner experiences of my entire trip, a visit to the Corning Glass Museum.
Corning Museum of Glass
Friends and family members might recall that in earlier years I did a lot of work in stained glass. The Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, is a fabulous combination of art work and glass blowing demonstrations but it pales in comparison to the Corning Museum of Glass, site of one of the world’s premier collections of historical glass, archives containing a veritable encyclopedia of the history of glass-making, and live educational demonstrations. The museum was founded in 1951 by the Corning Glass Works Corporation. Today the museum is a complex of galleries, hands-on experiences exploring the creation of glass, live demonstrations and, of course, a massive gift shop! The museum hugs the side of a hill just east of the village center.
Upon entering one is in a cavernous lobby area anchored by the 1999 Fern Green Tower, a creation of Dale Chiluly, famed modern glass artist.
The first area that I explore is the Contemporary Art & Design Gallery, a sleek white space designed to flow around the striking pieces of glass art.
One of the most striking pieces is “Carrion” by Javier Perez (2011) as a metaphor for the declining Murano, Italy, glass industry. The piece was originally built as a chandelier of birds eating carrion in a pool of blood by the road and then deliberately broken as a statement of art. Not sure about that, but it certainly is a striking piece…
Moving on from the contemporary galleries I stop by one of the amphitheater educational sessions where the glass making process is demonstrated and explained to the audience.
The next stop is the Innovation Center, an area which explains the creation of glass through various hands-on displays as well as educational vignettes. This display, a wall of beakers containing elements of the periodical table, allows visitors to manipulate the color of glass via the computer terminals below.
This vignette is accompanied by an explanation about the creation of early windows. The molten glass was blown into an oval and then spun quickly into a disc which was then cut into window panes.
A second, smaller theater is currently hosting a seminar of Japanese tourists learning how glass vases are formed. The person on the left is actually an interpreter who translated the instructor’s comments into Japanese for the audience. Even though I was at the museum on a rainy morning in the middle of the week in early October, the museum was jammed with tourists. There were seven tour buses in the parking lot when I arrived at 9:30am!
On to the historical galleries. The featured exhibit at this time is the work of Louis Tiffany, son of the famous jeweler. Tiffany glass was one of the key “must haves” for an affluent household around the dawning of the 20th Century, whether it be a stained glass window, lamp shade or skylight.
The third major area of the museum is an enormous gallery of glass entitled 35 Centuries of Glass, a collection of some of the rarest glass in the world that traces the evolution of glass from the earliest times. I walk through the chronological displays, a stunning and thoughtful presentation of the history of glass.
Early glass makers in Mesopotamia and Egypt used a technique called “core forming” where molten glass was formed around a removable core of some other material. Just how this process occurred is not known with theories including that the core might have been dipped into pots of molten glass or ropes of hot glass were wrapped around the core, or perhaps a glass powder was applied to the core and then it was heated into glass. No one really knows… This collection of glass objects dates from 1400-1300 B.C. (Before Christ).
One of the more common uses for glass in ancient Middle East was as a container for kohl, a black powder used as make-up (recall Egyptian “cat eyes”). These kohl containers are actually from ancient Persia (present day Iran) from around 500-400 B.C.)
The evolution of glass making continued under the ancient Greeks, who developed mosaic glass, a process where different colors of glass were baked together to form colorful pieces. These items are from around 300-200 B.C.
Glass making became more sophisticated under the Romans, who learned how to apply different layers of glass and then etched in designs as well as attached metallic accents to the glass. This case contains items from 200-300 A.D.
After the fall of the Roman Empire there was a pause in the evolution of glass in Europe as it became quite a luxury during the Middle Ages. The same was not true in the Middle East where glass makers continued to evolve various techniques of creating luxury glass as evidenced by these items from around 1000 A.D.
Six hundred years later the production of glass in the Western world began to increase as Europe came out of the Middle Ages and began to explore more contact with the outside world. The Roemer was a glass widely used throughout Germany and the Low Countries for drinking beer and wine. It had a wide stem decorated with “prunts”, blobs of glass attached to the stem to make it easier to hold.
Glasswork in England lagged behind the rest of Europe and most of the noble houses imported their glass from abroad. However, unique British glass crafts developed, including bead work. Glass beads were embroidered onto silk and formed into various objects, primarily for display, not for function. This basket is from the 17th century.
At roughly the same time this drinking flask was created in Spain. The short spout on the right was where the wine was poured into the flask, the long spout on the left was where the wine was poured directly into the recipient’s mouth.
Glass production rapidly became more sophisticated and the etching more elaborate, especially amongst the great courts of Europe. These goblets once graced the tables of the Tsarinas of Russia, Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, during the 1700’s.
World fairs became popular in the last half of the 1800’s and elaborate glass creations were part of the displays. This case contains four examples: a blue Baccarat punch bowl set from the 1867 Exposition Universalle in Paris; the “Alhambra” vase from the 1862 London’s World Fair; a Baccarat boat made for the 1900 Paris World Fair is displayed on a 1905 Baccarat crystal and marble table.
By the late 1800’s British glass makers were turning out elaborate glass fixtures, including this 1883 crystal candelabrum and the striking emerald green set of a chandelier and wall sconces from 1890.
At the same time the once famous glassworks of Italy began a revival and once again were producing some of the finest glass in the world.
These have just been some of the highlights from a collection that goes on and on…
As is typical with many museums the primary way out is through the gift shop. Entering by a lighted glass tree, the store is jammed with people examining a wide variety of glass-related merchandise.
From the beauty of man’s creations to the beauty of nature, my path through the Southern Tier follows I-86 west. This is sparsely populated country, a crumpled landscape of forested in hills and valleys. In many ways it reminds me of my mother’s 1970 sculptured shag carpet, all in hues of fall.
Next up: Lucy, I’m Home!
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