Monday’s Gazette featured the book Flowers In Glass by Julia Berrall, picturing a flower setting incorporating a pair of Carder Candlesticks. In One of the acknowledgements in the book, the author thanks Isobel Lee (among others) for assistance in producing the book. Let’s take a look at Isobel Lee’s background.

Cire Perdue, Lost Wax Casting in Crystal Glass, of the Head of Isobel Lee c. 1939
8 inches high and signed by Frederick Carder

In Mary Jean Madigan’s text, Steuben Glass. An American Tradition In Crystal, the author at page 93 describes the “feminine domain” during wartime (WWII) at the Steuben Showroom. “And a young saleswoman, Isobel Lee (who became Steuben’s director of public relations), served the war effort as a Red Cross worker in the South Pacific. There, she met government officials who would later play an important role in Steuben’s history.”

Lee played a role in that history, confirming Steuben’s growing reputation as an agent of international goodwill, where Steuben engaged in a joint project with the United States government to develop the “Asian Artists in Crystal” exhibit with Asian artists. Seeds of that undertaking had been sown during the war, when Isobel Lee, a Steuben employee on leave to serve the Red Cross in the South Pacific, became acquainted with many high-ranking military and government officials, who stayed in touch at war’s end. One of Lee’s friends, Harold Stassen, became director of the Foreign Operations Administration in the early 1950a. At the time, Communism was perceived as a threat to many underdeveloped Asian nations, and Stassen had a mandate to strengthen ties between those countries and the United States.” p.117