Corning Museum of Glass

Having seen only half of the Corning Museum of Glass, we had to go back today. After breakfast, coffee, and Dog Time, we headed off to Corning, NY, about 10 miles away.

On the way to CMOG, we passed by the Corning Inc. corporate office building. Or, I should say, one building of a huge complex covering about 4 city blocks. The buildings are clad in……glass….

The exterior of the CMOG is also clad in….glass….

And the entrance to the museum is made of huge glass walls. The entrance doors are set into a recessed area for weather protection, and are also made of clear glass. The effect is almost of being in a glass maze, where you don't quite know where to go. Cool!










Our first stop within the museum was to a second Contemporary Glass Gallery containing works of the 1975 to 2000 period. This is considered to be a renaissance period for American Art Glass, as exemplified by Mary Shaffer's pieces. Glass and metal heat and cool at different rates, so these pieces show the excellent control Ms Shaffer had over the process. The frozen droop makes them look as if they could drip to the floor at any second!

Our last photo in this section is of Jay Musler's Cityscape. Done in 1981, before glassblowers could blow a vessel of this size, Musler took a Pyrex industrial flask from Corning Glass Works, cut it in half, and then cut in the city scape around the rim. A little sandblasting, and an airbrushed paint job created a city at sunset.

Then we entered  an Exhibition area entitled "35 Centuries of Glass". A "glass timeline" begins with ancient glass and ends with modern glass as you pass through eight separate areas.

The center piece in this photo is the oldest known piece of manmade glass. With a star shape, it originated in Northern Iraq about 1450 B.C.

In the Roman Glass section, we saw examples of Roman Luxury glass. Made for wealthy patrons about 30 B.C., these pieces were made of ribbons of different colored glass fused together into a disk and then heated to a point where the disk slumped over a mold.

The Islamic Glass exhibit was informative in that glass blowing was discovered in the Syro-Palistanian area of the Roman Empire.

Moving into the Venetian and European exhibits, we chuckled at these "Trick Glasses". Drinking played a large part of life in 18th century Europe, where drinking to a persons health expressed one's esteem or sympathy. Trick Glasses brought a cheerful character to these occasions. Elaborately shaped glasses were designed to be as difficult as possible to drink from without spilling the contents, while others provided amusements by their fanciful shapes.

The glass on the left must have provided many laughs watching guests try to drink from it. The secret is to suck the liquid through the hole in the handle! The piece on the right is impossible to drink from unless one covers a hole in the stem and suck the liquid from the stag's head! Both of these are from Bohemia/Germany in the 18th century.

Barcelona, Spain, contributed this exquisite glass slipper from the 17th century. About 4 inches long, it is indeed a work of art.

The American Glass exhibit started with these oddly shaped glass objects. A little research revealed that they are pieces of naturally occurring glass formed when lightening hits the ground.

You might remember these glass kitchenware pieces from the 1930-1950's!

This is one of Thomas Edison's original glass light bulbs.

This copy of the Liberty Bell was made by the H.C. Fry Company of Rochester, Pennsylvania, in 1905. It was displayed at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon, in 1905, and then returned to the Fry showroom until the company closed in 1934. Because of its 30 pound weight, it must have been difficult to cut.

The setting of the Paperweight exhibit did not allow for photography with my little iPhone cam, so I can't show you some of the exquisite pieces on display there, except for this 100 pound sphere commissioned by the museum as the 1000th paperweight in its collection. The artist, Josh Simpson, used multiple layers of glass to enclose vast sea and spaces capes with minute terrestrial and extraterrestrial details.

Of course, the museum has an extensive of Tiffany pieces. Louis Comfort Tiffany was commissioned to design this stained glass window for a Gothic Revival mansion built by Melchior S. Beltzhoover in 1905. Depicting the Hudson River as seen from the mansion's location on an adjacent hilltop. When the mansion was donated to the Catholic Church in the 1970's, most of the furnishings were removed and sold. The mansion burned to the ground in 1977.

This Tiffany window depicts the triumph of life over death with the hope of resurrection.

This Tiffany lamp was originally designed for the use of whale oil, but was converted to electricity. What a beauty!

This Favrile Flower-Form vase from Tiffany in 1911 is one of Tiffany's most favorite forms. "Jack-in-the-Pulpit" or "Pansy" was given it's iridescent sheen by a method patented by Tiffany in 1893.

Tiffany vases command their own display case.

Frank Lloyd Wright is represented by his most famous stained glass window. called The Tree of Life, where he reduced the tree to it's most elemental geometric forms.

This Frank Lloyd Wright window was commissioned for the Darwin D. Martin home in Buffalo in 1902. One of 394 pieces of art glass in the home complex, it was removed during a 2000 renovation project.

In the exhibit entitled Crystal City, the history of the relationship between CGW and the town of Corning is explored. Elias Hungerford received a patent for glass window shades in 1866, and petitioned Amory Houghton Sr., president of Brooklyn Flint Glass Works in New York City to move his business to Corning and rename it the Corning Flint Glass Works. The purpose was to manufacture these glass shades. This example is from Houghton's house on First Street in Corning.

Unfortunately, the shades were not a commercial success, so the company was forced to turn to other glass products.

Many immigrant glass cutters came to Corning, working for the company producing wonderfully etched works of art. This electric lamp is from 1900-1913.

This punch bowl is from the period 1890-1910.

Corning Glass Works was commissioned to find a replacement for railroad signal lanterns that could withstand the heat of the lantern hitting the cold air or rain. Dr. Eugene Sullivan and chemist William Taylor developed a shock resistant glass named Nonex (non-expansion glass).

Jessie and Bessie Littleton, arrived in Corning in 1913, just as the search for other uses for Nonex began. One evening, Bessie noted that her new ceramic baking dish had broken in the oven, and wondered if Nonex would be a better material for baking. The next day, Jessie came home with a sawed-off battery jar for Bessie to try. Her first attempt resulted in a perfectly evenly cooked sponge cake which Jessie shared with his co-workers the next day.

Problem solved. Corning had a new product line.

In the Corningware Factory Store in downtown Corning, we saw this display: the worlds largest Pyrex measuring cup. It's about five feet tall!

After a cup of Cafe au Lait at Soulful Cup on Market Street in Corning, we strolled through the historical downtown, where D found this perfect leaf. Fall is just around the corner!

Back at the motorhome, Sasha needed a run, so D did the Chuckit thing in the failing evening light.