Because we are unable to travel to Corning this year and visit the CMoG, the Museum is coming to you!

One of the Virtual Symposium programs features Dr. Christopher (Kit) Maxwell, Curator of Early Modern Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Kit is contributing editor of In Sparkling Company: Reflections on Glass in the 18th-Century British World and curator of the current exhibition ‘In Sparkling Company: Glass and the Costs of Social Life in Britain during the 1700s’.

Kit graduated with a BA in History of Art from the University of Cambridge in 2001. In 2005, he completed his MA in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors at the University of London. He gained his PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2014 with research on the dispersal of the Hamilton Palace collection.

Between 2005 and 2010, Kit was Assistant Curator in the Ceramics and Glass Section at the V&A Museum working on the reinstallation of the ceramics galleries, with a focus on 18th-century continental porcelain and faience. He has held various posts at The Royal Collection Trust, latterly as project curator for The Art of Monarchy, a BBC Radio 4 series commemorating The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

As well as continuing his research on British glass in the 18th century, Kit is currently co-authoring a new publication on Corning’s collection of Asian glass, completing an M.Phil with the University of Glasgow on Nazi-era provenance research, and commencing a new research degree with the University of Warwick in the field of Caribbean Studies (with a focus on transimperial material identities in the 18th-century Caribbean)

Kit’s presentation will feature eighteenth-century English and Irish lead glass that formed a significant portion of the founding collection of The Corning Museum of Glass and acquired from the antiques department of Steuben Inc. At the time it was made, Britain was a vibrant and commercial nation. Its growing cities were hubs of sociability, scientific advancement, trade, and finance. Its glass industry was world-renowned.

From glittering costume and elaborately presented confectionery, to polished mirrors and dazzling chandeliers, glass helped define the social rituals and cultural values of the period. While innovations in glass delighted the wealthy, the material also bore witness to the ambitions of colonization and the horrors of the African slave trade. Glass beads were traded for human lives and elegant glass dishes, baskets and bowls held sweet delicacies made with sugar produced by enslaved labor. Underpinning Britain’s prosperity were aggressive foreign trade policies, colonization and a far-reaching economy of enslavement, the profits of which funded the pleasures and innovations of the fashionable world.

This talk is presented in conjunction with the special exhibition ‘In Sparkling Company: Glass and the Costs of Social Life in Britain during the 1700s’ at The Corning Museum of Glass (May 22, 2021 , January 3, 2022).

REGISTER for the Carder Steuben Virtual Symposium

September 10 – 11, 2021

Get the full schedule:

click here for program

click here for Registration

Some Tips for Symposium Registration

Check your PayPal account before you complete the registration form to make sure that your payment methods are up to date. Expired credit cards or outdated accounts will result in a VOID registration.

Once you register and pay, you should receive a confirmation of payment from PayPal. You also will receive an email from Zoom with the Webinar invite. Check your spam or junk mail folders. It should be there.

Questions? email: Bonnie Salzman at bsalzman@msn.com