First, to Club business. For those who are members we seek your input. At the last Symposium Carol Ketchum lamented how sad it was that in the Rockwell collection in building B at the Corning Museum (“CMOG”) the stunning amethyst cut glass ,Spanish Galleon, pedestal center bowl was separated from its matching candlesticks. See Fig. 10.94, p. 240 of Dimitroff’s book. When the Reifschlager gallery was dissembled the bowl belonged to the Rockwell, but the sticks were on loan and returned to the owner.
Someone else suggested that the Club should do something to honor Bob Rockwell as he was
approaching his 94th birthday.
Well, one thing led to another and Carol proceeded in pursuit of her mission. She thought it would be fitting to put the sticks back together with the center bowl and pestered the owner to that end; or is it she “persevered”? Anyway, after some time she got an agreement to sell the Club the sticks at appraisal value for our donation to CMOG. However, the value came in at $14,000 and the executive committee thought this was just too much for the Club to undertake and therefore the end of the story..
Enter Dick Bright. He loved the idea; not the cost to the Club. After some negotiations the Corning Museum agreed with Dick to share the cost to acquire the sticks, since this as a console set was a unique assemblage and important to preserve..
So, what we have is an opportunity to acquire the sticks to keep the console set and at the same time honor Bob. We have the available funds to afford this at this financial level. We have an opportunity to do something special with the CMOG. Such a joint venture is consistent with our mission. We also are told that there are several prospective buyers waiting in the wings if we don’t buy them, for their private collections. So, with all this the executive committee decided that we need to act now and is recommending this joint acquisition to its membership. Having said all of this we ask for membership input, and assuming it is positive we’ll proceed with this acquisition. So please let me have your responses, or questions or comments.
On other fronts we understand that with the closing of the Rockwell Gallery that the inventory has been sold and we expect or hope there will shortly be news that a successor shop will be at the same location.
Finally, we mourn the mid-October death of Neil Kohut of Las Vegas, a long time Carder Steuben dealer and collector who was an active dealer at Hillsborough and Costa Mesa shows for many years.
Carder Club Symposium is Sept. 15 – 16 in Corning, NY. In our already filled program, Nick Williams, the photographer for CMOG, will present a program on digital photography.