Happy Birthday

Sep 18, 2014
Issue 2060

Revelers

Tonight, Tom & Peetie Dimitroff will host their annual Frederick Carder birthday party for year #151. (b. l863-d. 1963) What a way to launch the beginning of the Symposium weekend.

Myths

Hi Alan,

I have enjoyed the last few GG’s regarding erroneous statements made in glass reference guides. Thinking about the willow branch myth, it led me to wonder, what would our members say are the top “glass myths”?

My example would be the term, “straw mark.” I presume that this is a colloquial term for certain kinds of surface flaws, said to be caused by a piece of still-hot glass being packed in straw for shipping. Now, aside from the fact that if glass were THAT hot and even slightly pliable, it wouldn’t be ready for packing, it begs the question, if this were possible in the first place, why wouldn’t a piece be covered with such flaws, and discarded?

It will be interesting to hear what other (I hope more substantive) glass and glassmaking myths our members can recount. Some of these myths would be amusing if they weren’t so widely held, endlessly repeated and seemingly impossible to eradicate.

Michael Krumme, LA

Symposium 2025
Carder Steuben Glass Association
19-20 September 2025
© Carder Steuben Glass Association Inc.