Section 5: December 1932 Country Life Magazine

This is an advertisement for Steuben shape 7481 engraved in the T-24 Riviera pattern and shape 7485 engraved in the T-31 St. Tropez design. It is from the December 1932 edition of Country Life magazine.

Click below to view ad.

More Life Time Tributes to Jane Spillman

My Tribute to Jane

Violet Wilson

I worked for Jane in the Curatorial Department for more than 25 years. Jane was the Curator of Ameri­can Glass when I started in 1986, and she loved working at the Museum. At that time, unlike today, each person did not have their own computer. The South Offices shared an IBM computer that the secretaries used for letters, etc. Jane dictated letters into a dictation machine then she gave them to me to transcribe. One time she was dictating while in the bathtub and you could hear her kids in the background pounding on the bathroom door.

Jane was always very generous with her time when visitors stopped in with their glass pieces though some of them often stopped in without an appointment. If Jane was in her office, she would drop whatever she was doing and spend time looking at their pieces and giving them information. Quite often this led to gifts or purchases of glass to the Museum collection.
There were some challenges working with Jane as well. When there were changes to be made to the labels in the galleries, Jane hand wrote her changes on the printed-out label copy. I can remember many times I struggled to read her writing and usually had to check with her again and again.

Jane did a lot of traveling for the museum and she was always very conscientious of the money she spent for trips. She had me search for the most inexpensive flights and hotels I could find. Jane also did a lot of personal traveling and she often had some traveling adventures to talk about when she returned to work.

I felt that the Curatorial Department was very close-like a family. Jane often hosted the department at her house for a summer picnic or Tina Oldknow, Curator of Modern Glass, would have everyone to her house; I even had the department to my house several times. We had a lot of good times together.

I enjoyed working with Jane very much and miss having her at the Museum.