The Corning Museum of Glass has awarded grants to fund research projects on Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, glass craft traditions and the Berkshire Glassworks in 2008.
Susan M. Rossi-Wilcox, who recent…
The Corning Museum of Glass has awarded grants to fund research projects on Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, glass craft traditions and the Berkshire Glassworks in 2008. Susan M. Rossi-Wilcox, who recently retired as administrator of the Glass Flowers collection at the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, is preparing a comprehensive study on the botanical models created in the late 19th century for the university by the Blaschkas, a father-and-son team of lampworkers from Dresden, Germany. Ms. Rossi-Wilcox notes that she is interested in answering three key questions: the context in which the collection developed; where the Blaschkas took artistic license in making the models; and what the sources of the reference materials were. Her studies will include an extensive investigation of archival materials dating from the beginning of the collection in 1886 to the last accessions in 1936, at Harvard; the Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass; and papers pertaining to Mary Lee Ware (one of the benefactors of the collection) at the historical society in Rindge, New Hampshire, site of her family“s farm. The most recent of Ms. Rossi-Wilcox“s many publications on the Glass Flowers is Drawing upon Nature: Studies for the Blaschkas“ Glass Models (2007), which she co-authored with David Whitehouse, executive director of The Corning Museum of Glass. Frances Liardet, a doctoral candidate at Cardiff University who holds degrees from Oxford and Bristol Universities, is researching continuity and change in craft practices in the ancient world. Her dissertation will focus on the tradition of Mediterranean core-formed vessels. “Artefacts which form coherent typologies, such as Mediterranean Group I, stem necessarily from durable craft traditions, which themselves arise from the repeated transmission of craft skills,” says Ms. Liardet. “However, there is relatively little archaeological literature which considers the specific processes by which craft skills are transmitted – that is to say, taught and learned. Consequently, the explanatory potential of studies on teaching and learning for archaeological typologies has not been addressed”. Lance Kasparian will complete research and fieldwork for a history of the Berkshire Glassworks, which operated in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, from 1853 to 1903. The Berkshire Glassworks specialized in the manufacture of handmade plate and cylinder glass for church windows. Mr. Kasparian will study the firm“s organization and development, its use of local materials, the presence of skilled foreign workers, and “links with the emerging design establishment and stained glass artists in 19th-century Boston.” One part of this project, he says, will address “the concept of a proto-opalescent phase in the development of 19th-century American stained glass”. Mr. Kasparian received degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Boston University. He is a member of the American Institute of Architects and the author of several publications on stained glass manufacture and trade in the Boston area. The research of Rossi-Wilcox and Liardet are funded by The Rakow Grant for Glass Research of The Corning Museum of Glass. This fund was created by the late Dr. and Mrs. Leonard S. Rakow. It is awarded annually to support scholarly research on the history of glass and glassmaking. Mr. Kasparian“s research is funded by the Richards Award for Research in American Glass, established in 1997 by The Corning Museum of Glass and the Richards Foundation in memory of Paul Richards.