This past Sunday the CSGA was treated to wonderful presentation by Peter Rutan who shared his family’s history and close connection with glassmaking.  His great-grandfather, Edward Palme Sr. was a master engraver who immigrated to the United States from Europe to work in Corning.  The presentation was packed with rich historical details about the major European glass centers and the early days of glass making in Corning.  Thank you to Peter, Mark Wheeler, and the Rutan and Wheeler families for sharing their story with us.

Scott Hansen wrote in with some additional information regarding one of the fish designs featured in last week’s Gazette:

“Scott Coots and I have had an ongoing but sporadic exchange about the transition from the Carder era to the Houghton era.  Specifically we have tried to unravel some ambiguities in design attribution between Carder, Waugh and Teague (for instance, what is a Teague design – the object or just the engraved decoration or both?).  Every time we think we might have sorted something out we discover it really just raises more questions.

The large 7698 fish is a good example.  Commonly accepted wisdom has been that this fish was a Carder design.  After all, it was included in Gardner, right?  Turns out it is not so simple.  Madigan gives joint credit to Carder and Waugh.  This feels like a “punt” to me where specific definitive information wasn’t available or known.  But who knows.  She does this a number of times.  A 1939 catalog gives sole credit to Waugh (see below) as does a 1947 catalog (the same page was used in the later catalog).

I don’t have answers but I thought you might be interested in the discussion since it includes the fish shown in today’s Gazette.”

Thank you, Scott, for the additional information!  If any of our readers have comments, please feel free to write to us at Gazette@SteubenGlass.org.

Thanks to all who have renewed your CSGA membership for 2024.  One perk of belonging to the CSGA is that you also gain membership to the Corning Museum of Glass.  CMoG now offers digital membership cards and the updated membership dates have just been released.  If you recently joined or renewed your CSGA membership, please allow a couple of more weeks to receive your CMoG membership cards.