It’s Holiday Time

So it is. The Gazette will likewise take a holiday and will return on Monday, January 4, 2016. Hope one and all has a happy holiday.

A MILESTONE

More than half of our members have now renewed their membership in the Carder Steuben Club for 2016. Thank you to everyone who renewed so quickly. If you haven’t yet renewed, please do so now. You may mail a check in the envelope previously provided or use the on-line membership application on the Club website (www.cardersteubenclub.org).

Scott Hansen

President, Carder Steuben Club

Gardner on Acid Etched

Acid-etched vases, bowls, and other ornamental pieces were made at Steuben from 1906 to the end of Carder’s regime and a few years beyond. Carder loved these creations, some of which were obviously inspired by the English and French cameo glass of the late 19th century, but made more were Carder’s own fantasies realized in a wide variety of handsome forms and striking color combinations.

As usual, Carder’s choice of pattern names was intriguing. Over 300 names for these etched designs are in the factory records. While some, like Dragon, Dayton, and hunting are less imaginative than many of Carder’s appellations, they lend a certain aura of faraway places or relate to sporting activities. Others are so downright dull that one can only surmise that there were times when even Carder’s creative mind was drained of ideas. His reaction wehn pressed to name a pattern at such a time might well have been “Aw, the ‘ell with it–call it DUCKS!” Such unromantic names are a source of amusement and conjecture to present-day collectors. Today Fish, Grape, and even Bird Number 1 and Bird Number 2 have their places with the more distinctive names in the history of Carder’s etched glass.

In the 1920s, many etched designs were listed as “sculptured.” Some of these, especially when made in Alabaster had raw umber coloring rubbed into the backgrounds to accent the surface pattern and give an illusion of carving. Others listed as “sculptured” seem to be so designated as a sales ploy. Buyers have consistently paid higher prices for wares with elegant names, and the “sculptured” pieces were uniformly more expensive than the wares simply listed as “etched”. Carder was a master merchandiser and used many a sales pitch. He often remarked that when a color or shape was not selling as he thought it should, he doubled the price, and ‘it sold like a shot.”

Frederick Carder:Portrait Of A Glassmaker by Paul V. Gardner p.26-27

Shape: #6806

Form: Vase

Color: Colorless

Type: Acid Etched

Etching: unknown

Decoration: Surface Finish Burnt Umber

Size: 10 in high

Description: This etched pattern may be Trentham.

Yesterday’s Gazette #2370

In the late Nineteenth Century the English were making incredible carved glass works of art fashioned after the ancient Portland vase. These cameo glass pieces were being crafted while a young Frederick Carder was applying his ideas to the production at Stevens & Williams. He worked under the tutelage of the highly respected John Northwood.

He and Mr. Northwood designed and crafted some of the finest cameo glass ever made; and a team of expert glassmakers rarely assembled up to that time executed other examples, some of which look weeks to carve.

This was the cauldron that forged Mr. Carder’s love of glass and its intriguing play of light and color. Cameo glass was so cost prohibitive that many glass house started using acid cutting, at first combined with wheel polishing and detailing, and later just acid cutting. Most of the glass produced was repetitive and gradually faded from favor; that is, with the exception of the works that Frederick Carder was producing at Steuben.

Most of the colors and techniques he created for Steuben ended up in the treasured acid cut pieces. The process was timeless, but the style was all Frederick Carder. Nowhere is his skill and talent better revealed than in the vast array of acid cut pieces.

Objects of Desire, The Art of Frederick Carder by Alan Shovers @ p.68

Shape #2683

Gold Aurene Vase Cut to Black

Norfolk Pattern

8 1/2 Inches High