On September 18 of each year a birthday celebration is held in Corning, NY to
celebrate the 1863 birth of Frederick Carder . Last year’s toast was delivered
by Ed Bush with his recital of a poem about the greatness of Frederick Carder
and Sandwich Glass gaffer Joseph Bounique. This sparked Ed’s curiosity to find
out more about who Bounique was as well as the poem’s author and Corning Glass
Works’ employee, William T. Levitt. Ed thought about delivering the results of
his research at the Symposium, but felt it would be more appropriate as a
research paper which follows in this e-mail.
Ed will instead deliver a piece at the Symposium on research on correspondence
with Mr. Carder and J. Stanley Brothers. See the Symosium brochure attached
and please consider signing up for this blockbuster Symposium.
Ed’s work on the following paper is interesting to read in two respects. First,
the content of the research itself. Secondly, and importantly, Ed reveals his
inquisitive thought process in the research and how the process connects one
thing to another. How these many years later we can still puzzle out and connect
the dots. We’re fortunate to have the results of this research and the process
of getting there for which we say many “thanks” to Ed.
COMMENTS REGARDING WILLIAM LEVITT‛S POEM ABOUT FREDERICK
CARDER AND JOSEPH BOURNIQUE
By
Edward A. Bush
1. The Poem
A paper entitled “Frederick Carder, Artist and Glass Technologist” was delivered
at the 1939 Annual Meeting of the American Ceramic Society by Alexander Silverman, a
prominent glass chemist at the University of Pittsburgh. The paper was published the
same year in the Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society.
Three papers about Frederick Carder appeared in the technical literature in that
year; Silverman’s is the most comprehensive, and it still contains information about
Carder that can be found nowhere else. The following statement taken from the article is
as true today as it was in 1939: “The creations of Frederick Carder constitute a precious
art museum in themselves and, as a whole, have never been equaled by the products of
any other single individual for their variety, attractiveness, originality, and intrinsic
value.”
The article concluded with the following untitled poem about Frederick Carder
and gaffer Bonique which was attributed to one Bill Leavitt, said by Silverman to be a
Corning workman who wrote the poem in 1936. The poem apparently was recited in
Carder’s presence at an unidentified occasion in 1936; the last stanza seems to indicate
that Levitt [the correct spelling] was not present to recite his poem. [In reading the poem,
note that the name Bonique must be pronounced “Boni-cue” in order to rhyme with the
previous line.]
“Great moments come to every man,
A fleeting second when he can
Attain such fame that folks proclaim
The very mention of his name.
It matters not his dwelling place,
If by his skill he sets the pace
Or leads his guild in things they do-
As witness – ‘Gaffer’ Bonique.
In sixteen hundred thirty-nine,
He fashioned Sandwich glass sublime,
Attaining skill that folks opine
The very greatest of his time.
Three centuries since this ‘Gaffer’s ‘ start,
We find his very counterpart
Creating works of art anew,
Out-gaff’ring ‘Gaffer’ Bonique.
Intaglio and flashed designs
Acid-etched and free-hand lines
Proclaimed him from the very start
The greatest master of his art.
‘Gaffer’ Carder is the name
Of him who has attained such fame;
Who wrought with fire and loving care
Incomparable Steuben ware.
Our praise we add to Frederick’s laurel
In verse, which we wish might be oral,
From one who strives to reach the top
As ‘Gaffer’ in a small lamp shop.”
I had the honor of reciting the poem in the toast during the celebration of
Frederick Carder’s 142nd birthday on September 18, 2005. At that time I decided to see
what could be discovered about “Gaffers” Bonique and Levitt, and this article is the
result.
2. Joseph Bournique
I first contacted the curator of the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, MA,
who confirmed that a gaffer named Joseph Bournique [the correct spelling] had indeed
worked for the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company. Included with her reply were
several accounts from the Museum archives of the gaffer Bournique, of which the
following are typical: “There was gentle Adolphe [sic] Bonique whose aristocratic
appearance and courtly manners could make one believe that here was a descendant of
one of the lords of early French glasshouses, if not something as romantic as a lost
dauphin. He could spin out glass by a breath into forms as fragile as anything created by
the fabulous Venetians.” An article in the May 13, 1876 issue of the weekly Sandwich
newspaper Seaside Press stated that Bournique had blown a glass dish weighing 68
pounds, thought to be the heaviest glass article ever blown up to that time. An article
from the June 7, 1925, edition of The Boston Herald, the year of the 100th anniversary of
the founding of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company, carried Sandwich reminiscences
of the poet Bangs Burgess; she wrote “There was one lovely old man whom I remember
as a child called Mr. Bonique who was the gaffer of the Castor place shop.” Bournique
would have been about 45 at the time.
With the assurance that a gaffer named Joseph Bournique had worked at
Sandwich, I proceeded to search for more information about his origin, his career, and
whether he was in fact regarded as the best gaffer in the United States. The search took
place primarily at the Rakow Research Library and on the Web, but unexpectedly
benefited from information-sharing with two other men who were on the same search.
Since the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company was in business only from 1825 to 1888, it
was not necessary to search back to 17th Century Sandwich as the poem stated. Joseph
Bournique had been, in fact, a contemporary of Frederick Carder! Levitt, of course,
knew this, but used his poetic license to place Bournique in Sandwich in 1639, the year of
that town’s incorporation. Perhaps it was meant to be a joke since some of the original
hearers of the poem were probably aware of Bournique’s reputation, and may have even
known him or worked with or for him at one time.
Joseph Bournique was born at Baccarat, France, on June 18, 1833. He worked at
glass factories at Baccarat and Paris as a glassblower and cutter. Impoverished by the
Franco-Prussian War, he accepted an offer from William L. Libbey to work for him at
the New England Glass Company in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. Libbey, who seems
to have had a chronic illness, had gone to Europe for his health and was seeking a cure at
mineral springs in France. While there, he probably visited glass factories where he
encountered Joseph Bournique and recognized his talent. Joseph arrived in the United
States on Dec. 1, 1873, and his wife Melina and children Adolphe [age 11] and Victorine
[age 2] followed the next year, arriving on May 14, 1874.
Not long after this the New England Glass Company had serious financial
difficulties, and the article in the Seaside Press on May 13, 1876 shows that Joseph
Bournique was now working at the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company at Sandwich,
Massachusetts. At this time his son Adolphe was learning the trade, perhaps working at
times alongside his father. They were at Sandwich for only a couple of years before
moving on to another location. Over the next twenty-five years they held jobs, sometimes
together, sometimes separately, at a dozen or more glass businesses in Connecticut, New
York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, and finally at Kokomo, Indiana. In
1907 Adolphe opened the Bournique Glass Company in Kokomo to manufacture
opalescent glass, and Joseph died there on Feb.1, 1910. Adolphe died at Kokomo on July
23, 1913.
But did Joseph Bournique have a glassblowing “skill which folks opine the very
greatest of his time”, as claimed in the poem? In 1884 Joseph and Adolph Bournique
were hired to oversee the construction of the Reading Artistic Glass Works in Reading,
Pennsylvania, and to assemble a workforce and operate the plant. In a series of articles
The Reading Eagle, a local newspaper, reported on progress in constructing the plant.
The issue of Sept. 10, 1884 stated the following about the hired supervisor: “Joseph
Bournique, who is at the head of this new enterprise, has the reputation of being the best
glass blower in the United States. He worked in factories in Boston, Connecticut,
Phillipsburg, Beaver Co., Pa., and elsewhere.” Again, on October 19th: “The Rochester
Argus, in giving an account of the Phoenix Glassworks at Phillipsburg, Pa., where 500
hands are employed, refers to Joseph Bournique as ‘the finest fancy glass worker in this
country’”.
On the basis of this evidence I believe that it can be claimed, in agreement with
the poem, that Joseph Bournique was widely recognized in the trade to be the “very
greatest” glassblower of “his time”. However, his time was not 17th Century New
England, but the three decades prior to Frederick Carder’s arrival in America in 1903.
In the course of these studies I was surprised to encounter two other persons who
were researching Joseph and Adolphe Bournique. Kenneth Humphrey of Kokomo,
Indiana, was nearing completion of a book about glassmaking in Kokomo in which the
Bourniques were important figures; he is the webmaster of the site
http://bourniqueglass.com. Mr. Humphrey and I became good email friends, and I was
pleased to be able to provide him with information for his book. Hardly a week goes by
that we don’t find something new to report to the other.
The other reseacher was Jean-Francois Luneau, a university professor from
Clermont-Ferrand, France, who appeared at the Rakow Library seeking information
about the Bourniques and other French glassworkers who had emigrated to America in
the 1800’s. He is particularly interested in the American makers of the opalescent glass
used in the stained glass windows produced by Tiffany, LaFarge, and others. Mr. Luneau
also traveled to Kokomo where he met Mr. Humphrey and saw flat opalescent glass
being made at the Kokomo Opalescent Glass Company.
3. William Thomas Levitt
William Thomas Levitt, the writer of the poem, was born at Haselton, Mahoning
County, Ohio, on May 27, 1892. His father, William C. Levitt (sometimes spelled Leavitt
in the records), immigrated from England in 1882 and settled in Elmira, New York,
where he worked as a laborer. He married Ora Albertson, an Elmira-area girl, and they
had three daughters at Elmira before moving to Ohio. After William’s birth they moved
to Warren, Ohio, where William attended the local schools.
After high school he was employed by a company in Chicago that manufactured
glass X-ray tubes, and it was probably here that he began his career in lampworking; i.e.,
“that branch of glassworking which processes glass tubing and glass rod into intricate
shapes and forms, using an ordinary air-gas or air-gas-oxygen blast lamp for heating the
raw material and fashioning the finished product free hand.” (This definition comes from
an article on the subject written by Levitt.)
On Dec. 14, 1917 he enlisted in the Army Chemical Warfare Service where he may
have been able to continue developing his lampworking skills. After his discharge in 1919
he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended classes for three years at John
Hopkins University, but did not receive a degree. From 1922 to 1928 he was president
and general manager of the laboratory supply house of Levitt-Ferguson Company in
Baltimore.
In 1929 he became employed at Corning Glass Works in Corning, New York, in
the Industrial and Laboratory Sales Department. This was a supervisory position, and
probably did not require him to personally fabricate glassware for sale. However, one of
the public relations responsibilities of this position was presenting lectures with
demonstrations of glassworking across the country. An article published in a Corning
newspaper on Aug. 18, 1934 states that Levitt had made over seventy-five such lectures
before meetings of the American Chemical Society during his employment with Corning
Glass Works.
In February, 1934, he delivered a talk and glassworking demonstration entitled
“Flame Working of Glass” at the Annual Meeting of the American Ceramic Society at
the Glass Division luncheon. The text of his talk was published in a seven-page article in
the 1934 volume of the Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society under the title

“Modern Aladdins”. This article ends with the following incredible Levitt poem:
“Chemical action and dissociation,
Problems that puzzle the chemical nation,
Chemical kitchens whose odor still lingers,
Recall the lampworker’s spry, nimble fingers.”

Having been a subscriber of the Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society since
1951, and being acquainted with the previous issues, I can fairly confidently state that
Levitt’s two poems are the only ones that have ever appeared in that publication.
But what was Levitt’s reputation as a lampworker, and does he belong in the
poem as a fellow gaffer with the titan gaffers Joseph Bournique and Frederick Carder?
On Nov. 29, 1932 Levitt made his standard presentation at M.I.T. at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and the student newspaper carried the following story the next day:
“Expert Glassblower Demonstrates Skill Before Large Crowd One of the most skillful glassblowers in the country, Mr. W. T. Levitt, of the Corning Glass Company [sic] gave a talk to a large audience in Room 10-250 yesterday afternoon at 4 o’clock. He demonstrated the use of various pieces of equipment in the construction of a fairly complicated apparatus, a type of reflux condenser,and actually made the whole piece during the last part of the hour. Before the demonstration…”
This is the only assessment of Levitt’s skill as a lampworker that I have found,
but it is clear that he was excellent in his trade and felt qualified to be in the poem. (Note
that he was on a first-name basis with Carder in the last stanza.)
Levitt’s employment at Corning ended on September 30, 1934. He and
his family moved to Needham, Massachusetts, where he started his own
company again, Tamworth Associates, Inc., to manufacture syringes and
hospital glassware. This explains why he was not present in Corning for the
1936 recitation of his poem. He sold that business in 1940 and went with E.
H. Sargent & Co., a manufacturer of scientific apparatus, as a branch
manager. Finally, he returned for another stint at Corning Glass Works from
1948 to 1954. William T. Levitt died in Miami, Florida, in March, 1972, at age 79.
4. Final Comments
It is left to the English Lit. majors in the Club to critique the poem regarding its
poetic qualities. In Silverman’s article he charactarized the poem as “doggerel”, but
“significant doggerel”. Frederick Carder seems to have treasured it since two typewritten
copies of the poem are found with his correspondence at the Rakow Library.
William Levitt’s decision to work at Corning may have been influenced by his
acquaintance with the area because he had undoubtedly visited his relatives in nearby
Elmira. His wife’s name was Edna, but her maiden name was not found. They had one
child, a son named Charles William. A soldier named Sgt. Charles W. Levitt of the 87th
Mountain Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, was killed in action at Valpiana, Italy, on
Feb. 21, 1945.
During Joseph Bournique’s career in America he was involved in the manufacture
of many kinds of glassware, including colored “artistic” glass, both at the gaffer’s bench
and in the management of businesses. With Maurice Contat in 1881 he became a pioneer
manufacturer of opalescent sheet glass at the Artistic Glass Works in Brooklyn, New
York. Unfortunately, there was little market for opalescent sheet glass at that time, and
the factory closed after a year or two and Bournique moved on.
During this study I was surprised to find so many French immigrants engaged in
Americ