A Loss

We’re sorry to report that over the weekend we lost a long time club member, Lois Duff of Chapel Hill, NC

Conceptual Ideas

The late glass dealer, Neil Kohut, had some interesting thoughts on the evolutionary process of the greats of glass design.

“Carder certainly incorporated other artists ideas into his repertoire. Every Great artist does. He drew far more from his classical art background than he did from anything he may have gleaned from Tiffany. As absolute proof of this Tiffany worked in freeform designs while Carder worked in classical form. When you look closely at the design of their pieces you will see that while they shared certain design elements the conceptual ideas were very different as an artist. I am sure that Carder was struck by the works of Loetz and Tiffany at the Paris Exposition of l900. Their works stunned the art world. They went off in a totally new direction. Those firms were innovators at the cutting edge of the Art Nouveau design. If Carder had a fault, I would say that he was so bound by his classical training that he was a poor innovator. All of his work was slightly derivative, incorporating other ideas into his structure. What came out was different, but frequently breakthrough design. In that regard Carder was no different than the masters of fine arts and crafts everywhere. Tiffany’s designs also drew from other artists.”