First, several nice comments on the getting started by trading story of Mark Chamovitz. I’ll pass them on.
Great story……John Lolley
What a lovely thing! No wonder you began to collect. Beth Jacques
What a fabulous story. Susan Shovers

Your story captivated my attention. You were so very fortunate to have traded the piece and got it back a year later. How much luck played in this piece of your life? Congratulations. Would love to see an image. Miriam Paul
And a comment on my story, I love the story. And I agree . . . the fun is in the hunt! Linda White.

Now to Beth Jacques story.
Well, my story, such as it is:
I was working on my MA at NYU in Visual Culture (mercifully, since acquired) and three years ago took a course in arts appraisal. The instructor was Alan Fausel, who assigned us an exercise involving going to an auction. As I recall, it wasn’t necessary we bid, but we needed to select an item, preview it, and follow the bid (+ and – hammer price, sales tax, delivery, etc.) I was originally following a couple of Tiffany lamps at Doyle’s September Belle Epoque auction. I stumbled over a Carder Steuben twist stem goblet noted as “verre de soie,” estimated — and this is just a guess as this point — between $100 and $300. I “interviewed” an expert (whom I later discovered was Malcolm Mac Neil, Doyle’s 19th and 20th century furniture and decorative arts specialist), had a nice chat about the Tiffany lamps, glass in general, and what he collected. I found the “verre de soie” goblet was actually “opalescent;” I put in an absentee bid [my first bid in a “name” auction house ever] in the middle of the range (having carefully calculated reserve, buyer’s premium, sales tax and possibly delivery charges vis a vis what a dealer might consider a worthwhile mark-up), and got the stem at $150.00 (excluding hammer price and sales tax).
Mr. Mac Neil told me in a follow-up visit to Doyle (another paper for Alan Fausel) I got a fine item at a good price. I bought the Dimitroff book, started reading, determined that I liked tableware stems for their sculptural quality, color, and relative availability. Plus, one-off stems was pretty much what I could afford. I worked through e-bay (though not anymore), a number of dealers (primarily on Trocadero), and some national auction houses — at which I’ve been pretty much outbid recently, so I’m licking my wounds and saving up.
Along the way I looked at every piece of period glass I could find in the Met and at the Brooklyn Museum, cased antiques and collectible shows, and joined the Carder Steuben club. That led to Corning membership and to exhibitions at the Steuben Madison Avenue retail HQ
NY. Alas, I haven’t been able to GET to the Corning Museum yet, or the Wheatfield, or all the other interesting places I’ve discovered, but I can assure you that the display of Carder Steuben at Chicago’s Art Institute, while charming, is…a…bit…lacking. That I checked out personally on a visit home.
Anyhow, now I’ve got a 30’s Anglo-Indian deco vitrine with a reasonable assortment of Carder Steuben stems, several free-blown vases by Thomas S. Buechner, and a “Space Age” purple goblet signed by Buechner and Lino Tagliapietra. Thanks to my NYU internship in the Netherlands, I discovered a side interest in pre WW-II Leerdam. I have a 30s Copier vase, an early Copier serica and an Eisenloeffel piece, and from there I’m sorting of working back to Josef Hoffman and Werkestatte in general and…well…you know. The good side of living here is that we also have the Neue Museum and Moss Design and all the contemporary glass works in Brooklyn as well as the Steuben HQ, so I’ve quickly developed tastes that are aspirational only. (And what would I do with a complete set of de Bazel crystal if I found it?) The apartment is only so big, and it’s not something you put out for entertaining. (Well, maybe if you own Moss or the Neue). I’m sure this is far more than anyone ever wanted to know. I find myself going on. And what that indicates is Frederick Carder has started me on an avocation that’s going to be lifelong.
Gotta go! Museums to see, people to meet, collections to visit! And then I just have to puzzle out this line drawing….