Steuben Glass Past, Present and Future

Local historian and retired teacher Tom Dimitroff delivered a PowerPoint slide program about Steuben Glass to about 50 Corning Incorporated retirees and guests Oct. 12 in the Riverfront Café. He opened with a photo of a stately young woman holding a Steuben apple…his favorite ad for the modern clear Steuben products…and, to show how he felt about the recent Steuben developments, the woman shed a tear.

He then traced Steuben’s history beginning in 1868 when Amory Houghton brought his Brooklyn Flint Glass Works to Corning and brought with him John Hoare and his cut-glass business. Their plan: Houghton’s company would make glass blanks for Hoare’s craftsmen to turn out beautiful glass tableware, tumblers and the like.

By about 1900, Corning Glass Works was making glass tubing, lantern lenses and other products for OEMs (other equipment manufacturers. When Corning announced it stop making glass blanks for the glass cutters that had sprung up in the area. Among those was TG Hawkes, a major producer of cut-glass objects, who lured Frederick Carder from England in 1903 to form the Steuben Glass Works to supply the needed blanks. Besides blanks, Carder applied his artistically creative talents to attractive colored glass vases and art objects which Dimitroff showed in several slides…including one which originally sold for $15 and was recently purchased at auction for $50,000.

During World War I when Steuben Glass Works could no longer get the materials needed for its art glass products, Corning Glass Works purchased Steuben as a division of its company so it could continue production. Corning, as a producer of materials and components critical for the war effort, was thus able to procure the materials needed by Steuben. Carder, however, was not fond of his new parent company. He called it “Smokestack U” and decried its mass-produced products that he felt lacked art and craftsmanship. In 1923, the Carder era of colored Steuben Glass ended when Arthur Houghton became the youngest member of Corning’s board of directors and took Steuben in a new direction with glass so optically clear it would allow all the colors of the spectrum to pass through it. With that new direction came new glass engraving craftsmen. Maxwell Erlacher was perhaps the most notable Steuben engraver.

The new Steuben, with its crystal clear glass and its skilled designers and engravers, became a prized new art glass form and established its reputation for exquisite gifts of state to government leaders and to countries around the world. Dimitroff showed a slide of the Valor Cup made in 1941 for the people of the United Kingdom to show the USA’s solidarity with them as they stood against the assaults of Hitler’s Germany. He also showed the Great Ring of Canada, a massive engraved piece given to Canada on its Centennial in 1967, and the exquisitely engraved (by Max Erlacher) Crusader Bowl given to Prince Charles and Princess Diana on their wedding. Other Steuben masterpieces he showed were the Chinese Pavilion…”a great work of engraving art”, and the Orchid Bowl which featured engravings on opposite sides of the bowl.

Dimitroff also discussed Thomas Buechner’s impact as vice chairman of Steuben Glass and the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG). In that role, Buechner set about making Steuben “the most beautiful glass the world has ever known.” Dimitroff credited Buechner’s role in preserving many of the museum’s precious books and photos in the aftermath of the Agnes Flood of ’72 by putting them in his swimming pool to keep them wet and prevent them from forming mold, which would have ruined them forever.

While the Steuben factory and its products are gone, Dimitroff told his audience to remember that from 1903 to 2008, every piece of Steuben Glass was made in this city by men and women of Corning, NY, and because of that, this city will always be The Crystal City. Whether for Corning or for Steuben, they worked for a company led by visionaries

Dimitroff ended his program with a most appropriate slide of an equally appropriate quote:

“Any company wants to be top drawer and wants to symbolize the best, not only in profits, but in contribution to society. And that’s what Steuben was.” Amo Houghton – 9-2-2011.

Crusader Bowl with its rim exquisitely etched by Max Erlacher

The Valor Cup – Gift of the U.S. to the people of the UK for standing against Hitler’s Germany

The Great Ring of Canada – For Canada’s Centennial

Dimitroff & Steuben craftsmen against the backdrop of the Chemung River and valley

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