We’re talking about The Metropolitan Museum of Art. First, let’s talk about what glass is in their collection. If you look up “Frederick Carder” on the Met searchable website (see below), not many pieces of Carder’s glass show up. An important cut to clear goblet in the Lyon pattern was discussed at length last week. The Lyon piece of Carder glass is the only Carder piece on display. There may be another couple of clear cut glass pieces in the Met inventory. Another important pieces is the Strawberry Mansion pattern.

Shape: 7389

Form: Vase

Color: Colorless

Type: Engraved

Cutting/ Engraving:Strawberry Mansion

“This vase, a formal descendant of the ancient Greek krater, was adapted from a late-eighteenth-century engraved goblet found at Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion, one of the earliest instances of historic preservation in America. The special commission commemorated the restoration of the house, completed in 1932, and suggests the contemporary level of interest in such preservation efforts. This popular vase was put into commercial production at the same time.” (description from the Met website)

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But what is missing from the Met collection?

1. Frederick Carder, the driving force in the creation of the Steuben brand, was an American art glass designer whose body of work is best known for colored glass, with as many as 140 colors he created. The Met collection includes no colored pieces.

2. One of the most important techniques of Carder’s glass was Intarsia. None at the Met.

3. Carder created some of the best coloration of iridescent gold and blue glasses. None at the Met.

4. Carder probably is the most important American glass maker of the Art Deco style of the 1920’s. None at the Met.

5. Carder created the difficult technique of Diatreta. None at the Met.

6. Carder developed Cire Perdue, or the Lost Wax process. This development of casting glass is, as I understand it, the technique used by today’s glass artisans. None at the Met.

I could go on, but these are enough examples.

Perhaps I’m being a little over critical since museum collections are largely a result of what is offered or donated to them. However, my sense of things is that Carder in some quarters doesn’t get the respect he deserves as one of the great American glass artists.

In closing, Thomas Buechner, while president of CMoG, summarized “No man could better personify the kaleidoscope of glassmaking during the past hundred years.” source, Victor Arwas at p. 296 of Glass Art Nouveau to Art Deco

Alan Shovers

Research Tools At the Met

You can search the MET Collection: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection