In 2003, to celebrate 100 years of Steuben glass, Corning historian and Steuben glass expert Thomas P. Dimitroff wrote a series of articles for the Corning Leader newspaper. Tom’s articles offered a retrospective view of Steuben glass across the decades and compared some common themes between the Frederick Carder and the Arthur Houghton eras. Tom gave our organization copies of nine of these articles and they are available for viewing on our website here. Tom’s first article was featured in an April Gazette.

The second Corning Leader article, dated June 15th, 2003, describes Frederick Carder’s career origins at Stevens & Williams watching John Northwood create some of his famous cameo pieces.  Tom wrote, “The experience of watching and working with Northwood instilled in Carder a love of glass, a love of color, and of relief in glass decoration.”

As we know, Carder’s glass designs also demonstrated his love of nature, which we see in many of his designs. A favorite technique of Carder’s was acid-etching, often referred to as acid cutback or ACB by collectors. Acid-etched pieces afforded Carder the opportunity to showcase both his love of nature and color.

These two vases below are beautiful examples.  The vase on the left is executed in Mirror Black over Alabaster glass, showing gazelles gracefully leaping away from a pursuing classic figure with a bow.  The vase on the right is a variation of the “Hunting” pattern made especially for the Crest Lamp Company and is made with Opalescent glass over Gold Ruby.

Steuben’s new crystal of the 1930s was naturally suited to express both mass and simplicity. Engravings were a key part of the Steuben style and Tom said, “Sydney Waugh was especially good at designing such objects for Steuben’s new brilliant crystal.”  One of his greatest successes was his 1935 “Gazelle Bowl.”

It’s interesting to view these pieces together, each with their own take on the gazelle design and reflecting the styles dominant in their respective eras.  Some other Steuben gazelle pieces are shown below.

Our first CSGA Member meeting of the new year is coming up this Saturday, January 18th beginning at 3:00pm EST.  Treasurer Jenny Monroe will share a recently-created presentation on Frederick Carder and Steuben Glass.  Though many of us know quite a bit about Steuben, we hope you might still learn something new.  And, as always, this meeting is a chance to catch up with other CSGA members and enjoy talking about glass together.

Information on how to join the meeting via Zoom was emailed to all members yesterday.  If you have any questions please email secretary@steubenglass.org.  We hope to see you there!