Yesterday’s Omitted Note From the Rakow

Dear Scott and the Members of the Carder Steuben Club,

On behalf of everyone at the Rakow Library, I want to thank you and the Carder Steuben Club, again, for all of your kindness and generosity. The Rakow Library is truly a special library, and this is because of the ongoing conversations and interactions between our amazing librarians and glass enthusiasts like yourselves (and there is no group more enthusiastic than the Carder Steuben Club!).

There are a number of projects that your generous gift could support, from working with the Carder Steuben oral histories to digitizing more design drawings. The Rakow and the Carder Steuben Club have a wonderful tradition of collaboration. In this spirit, we all look forward to working with the Club to select a project that provides support for your research and collecting while at the same time enhancing Library collections for researchers worldwide.

Thank you for your continued support, collegiality and friendship.

All the best,

Jim Galbraith, and the staff of the Rakow Library

2014 Symposium — Artist Debbie Tarsitano

At our Symposium in 2013 glass artist Debbie Tarsitano demonstrated exactly how Frederick Carder’s Cire Perdue (lost wax) process worked by conducting a live demonstration for the audience. Debbie couldn’t attend the 2014 Symposium but she found a way to be present nonetheless. Debbie contributed 3 items to the 2014 auction – a necklace she made using the cire perdue process, one of her paperweights and a second paperweight that was a collaboration between her and Max Erlacher. Bidding was robust for all her items.

During the course of the evening a question arose about her collaborative paperweight with Max Erlacher. No one knew if anyone other than Max Erlacher had ever engraved one of Debbie’s paperweights. After contacting Debbie she told me that Max was the only one who had ever engraved any of her paperweights. In fact, they had worked together for about 20 years. In addition, Debbie told me that she and Max had also produced glass sculptures where Debbie produced the glass and Max did the engraving. All of these sculptures are unique and many have been accepted into museum collections.

Debbie shared a photo and some documentation related to one of these sculptures which is entitled “The Outstretched Hand of Liberty” and which tells the story of her family’s immigration to America. Debbie described this piece as the most ambitious work she and Max produced together. I will share the photograph of this piece and its story in the Gazette in the very near future.