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Course: The Seeing America Project > Unit 3
Lesson 3: 1870-1939- Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket
- Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
- Burnham and Root, Reliance Building
- Louis Sullivan and the invention of the skyscraper
- An early skyscraper: Louis Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott Building
- A show-stopping cut-glass punch bowl
- A Landmark Decision: Penn Station, Grand Central, and the architectural heritage of NYC
- Going out to the cinema in 1913, John Sloan's Movies
- The moment of American Industry: Elsie Driggs, Blast Furnaces, 1927
- Van Alen, The Chrysler Building
- A brutal history told for a modern city, Diego Rivera's Sugar Cane
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A show-stopping cut-glass punch bowl
The Toledo Museum of Art showcases a stunning punch bowl made by Libbey glassmakers for the 1904 World's Fair. This piece, crafted in the Glass City, Toledo, Ohio, highlights the brilliance of American glassmaking. The bowl, first blown then cut, demonstrates the intricate skills of glassblowers and cutters, creating a magical play of light and color. Created by Smarthistory.
Want to join the conversation?
- was that bowl actually used at the fair, or was it a decoration?(2 votes)
- It was likely a display item, through which the shop or artizan who produced it hoped to drum up business.(2 votes)
- I wonder how long did it take him to make that glass patterns(1 vote)
- I wonder, too. It's a good thing, "wondering". It is the basis of philosophy.(1 vote)
- The illustration of the glass cutter on the cover of the magazine showed a person doing dust-producing work on glass that, presumably, contained a high amount of lead.
Both ground glass and lead seem to me to be dangerous things to inhale. Were any particular types of industrial health issues traced back to a skilled craftsman's glass cutting occupation?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(jazz piano music) - [Beth] We're in the Glass Pavilion, which is part of the Toledo Museum of Art, and we're looking at a
phenomenal punch bowl. Not only is this enormous, but it's also drop-dead gorgeous. It was made for the World's
Fair in St. Louis in 1904, which commemorated the
100th year anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. This must have been a showstopper. - [Diane] This was made to showcase all of the skill and artistry that the Libbey glassmakers had to offer. - [Beth] Libbey is a glass company based here, in Toledo, Ohio,
known as the Glass City. This cut glass was enormously popular with the American public. So, when this was exhibited
at the World's Fair, people really wanted to see it. - [Diane] Brilliant cut glass has its heyday from about the 1870s up until about World War I. This is the kind of glass that you would use for fine dining, that you would give as wedding gifts. It was greatly admired and so Libbey would
make something like this to really show off what they could do in this area of glassmaking. - [Beth] So this is first blown and then cut. - [Diane] You would have people that have great skills as glassblowers and, once they've made
this tremendous blank, like a blank slate ready to be cut, they would hand it off
to the glass cutters. Those were very different skills. And the glass cutters would
mark out a pattern on the bowl. They would go in and rough out the pattern to make a slight cut. Then they would go back and finish the cut and then you would have
to polish this piece, because when you touched the
glass with the cutting wheel, it would make the surface matte and you want the surface to be shiny. And when you cover the entire surface, it's very difficult to
go in and hand polish it. But in the 19th century, this would have been
dipped in hydrofluoric acid to give it this final polish and shine. - [Beth] You have a cutter who's balancing this
very breakable material and holding it against a
wheel, which is spinning, and he's making fine
cuts, sometimes deeper, sometimes more shallow. And he's looking through the
glass to what he's cutting. - [Diane] The way you describe it, you really get a sense of
how difficult the process is and what a tremendous
skill it is to be a cutter. And that's why if you were a glasscutter, this is all you did. You spent years and years
honing and refining your skills so that you could be very exacting. - [Beth] This is a level of craftsmanship that is hard to imagine today. I think we're used to things
being made by machine. It's so tempting to stare at
this for a very long time. - [Diane] I think that's the idea. Yes, you can get lost in the patterns, in the reflection of
the light in the glass and one of the wonderful things
about brilliant cut glass is that this is a lead-based glass. So a glass with lead in it
has a high refractory index. So, when you cut it, it allows
the light to pass through it in a way that creates
this wonderful brilliance and you get tremendous reflection, and you can see that
there's a rainbow effect. It really does create this
kind of magical moment where you get reflection
and pattern and light all working together. - [Beth] It's transparent
but it's filled with color. - [Diane] Many people would have a piece of brilliant cut
glass that was smaller. But imagine putting this on your table in the early 19th century and
the lighting might be dim. You might even have candles on the table. It would really create this atmosphere. - [Beth] I like to think about the setting of the World's Fair. This is a place where
countries had the opportunity to showcase their art, their technology, their manufacturing. And here was the United States putting forward Libbey's glass punch bowl as this amazing example of technology, of craftsmanship,
of what America could do. - [Diane] Glassmaking was
America's first industry. It was one of the first
things that was tried here by the early colonists. Now, glassmaking had been
successful in Europe much earlier. And now in America, we're able to show that
we can make these objects that are just as fine as the companies that
are coming out of Europe. - [Beth] So we have an American company making beautiful American glass with craftsmen who are
immigrants to this country. And all of this coalescing here in Toledo, in the Glass City. (jazz piano music)