John Styler asked in yesterday’s Gazette (#3087) how plaques are done.

In part, John, you might find the following at page 88 of Frederick Carder and Steuben Glass by Thomas P. Dimitroff interesting in discussing luminors.

“Carder’s interest in the ability of glass to transmit, reflect, and refract light led him to integrate art with light in the form of luminors. These massive pieces of glass were usually colorless, but sometimes included colored sections. They would employ shapes and bubbles to create fascinating effects with light emanating from their glass or metal basis. “They were highly decorative. Appropriately, Carder created a relief portrait of Thomas A. Edison, which in turn, was made into luminor plaques distributed first at a 1929 banquet celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the incandescent light and the opening of the Henry Ford Museum.’ A contemporary article concluded ‘The plaque is a triumph not only as a unique method of preserving the features of the inventor of the electric light by using that invention as part and parcel of the method, but as a striking illustration of a new development in the realm of art of the modern age.’

“Carder made other plaques, including one of George Washington, and one of Abraham Lincoln. On October 13, 1931, he patented as an ‘Article of Bric-a-Brac’ a pineapple shaped colorless luminor with controlled bubbles, and a black glass base. Other luminors included colorless balls, an eagle, a horse, a pigeon, a flame-shaped crystal, a religious figure, plaqes with nude figures, seahorses and classical human figures.”