From Mark Chamovitz on his beginning to collect Carder Steuben
Thank you for putting on a fantastic symposium again this year. Meeting all the new people, and seeing the friends I made last year was truly a wonderful experience again. I’ll tell you about my first acquisition about my first piece of Steuben, which incidentally is still MY favorite piece too. In approximately 1986, I was spending a Saturday morning scouring yard sales in the community in which I grew up, just outside of Pittsburgh Pa. I went to kind of an out of the way place (rural) to check out a yard sale that was advertised in a local paper. When I got there, I was pleased to see only a few people and tables and tables of offerings. I quickly got out of my car and started to look at all of the items for sale. At the far end of one of the tables were pieces of glass. There were vases and bowls, and such, and a small vase caught my eye. My heart started to race because low and behold this was in the mid 80″s, and French cameo glass was HOT. There before me was a piece of De Vez cameo. It was a small (5″ or so) piece with cuttings of a lakeshore scene on it. There was a price tag on the bottom, and I remember not knowing for sure because of the apparent quickness the prices must have been placed on the items, as to whether or not it read $50.00 or $500.00. At $500.00 at that time was about half of what it would have been bringing at an antique show. Remember, this was before the days of Ebay, and the only French cameo to see in any abundance for me was at the antique shows that came to the Pittsburgh area. I asked the lady running the yard sale what the best price on the piece was, and she stated that she felt that 50 dollars was fair, because she thought that it was pretty, and she didn’t know how they made the scene have texture like that. She said she thought it was good quality. I quickly gave her the 50 dollars, and told her that I too thought that it was a cool piece of glass. About a year later when I went to an antique show in Pittsburgh, I saw a Tiffany bowl that I had to have. (Incidentally, it was very similar to the shape of your first piece.) It was a pale green pastel/opalescent bowl. The dealer had $850.00 on it. I didn’t have the funds for it, but I thought maybe I’d ask the dealer if he would be interested with a trade for the De Vez piece. I described my cameo piece, which at the time was still very hot in the marketplace, and he said he would love to see it. I drove 20 minutes back home, and packed it up, and drove back into Pittsburgh to the show. The dealer scrutinized the piece of cameo, and said that he would trade me the Tiffany bowl for the cameo piece — even trade. I was thrilled, he was thrilled, and we made the trade, and went our separate ways. I had the Tiffany piece for about a year, and I was somewhat frustrated that although it was on a table in my front hallway in my apartment, no one seemed to notice what I thought as my beautiful piece of Tiffany glass. The antique show came back to Pittsburgh that fall, and I decided to attend. In a dealer’s booth who I knew to be one of Pittsburgh’s high end dealers, there it was. In the middle of a set of tiered shelves, there was this beautiful acid cut back Steuben vase. I didn’t know Steuben acid cut back at the time. I knew what cameo was, and I assumed it was a piece of French cameo. I told the dealer I absolutely loved the amethyst color over the white background. She informed me what it was, and told me that it was not signed, but assured me it was a Steuben acid cut vase in the Florida pattern — amethyst cut back to alabaster. She was asking I believe $1400.00 at that time, but said if I were serious about it, she would sell it to me for $1200.00. Again, not having the funds needed, I thought about my Tiffany bowl that no one ever noticed, and that this piece that I just fell in love with would really make a statement, and no one would pass this up in my front hall, and not make a comment about it’s beauty. I asked her if she would be interested in trading the Steuben piece for a really beautiful, gorgeous, stupendous, piece of “hot selling” Tiffany glass. She said that she was interested after described the bowl, and said she would have to see it. I asked her if she would take the vase down and place it under her table, and I would be back in an hour. Once again, I drove home, placed the Tiffany bowl in a box with lots of newspaper as I recall, and drove back to the show. Tiffany glass at that time was a hotter seller than Steuben, and that was fine with me, because she agreed to do the trade, wrote up the receipt as one Tiffany bowl traded for one Steuben vase — price $1200.00. I still have that receipt. I acquired the piece that I wanted, and she got the Tiffany piece that no one ever noticed. To this day I still revel in the fact that I was in the right place at the right time, and got to acquire a piece that I fell in love with at first sight, and in the long run ended up paying $50.00 for the piece that is still my favorite 20 years later.
Mark A. Chamovitz