Connect with The Corning Museum of Glass from your Couch: A Guide to our Digital Offerings

Dear blog readers,   

We are in the midst of an unprecedented moment for museums and cultural institutions across the country. With widespread closures due to COVID-19, our most direct way to reach the public is no longer a viable option. We are all doing what we can to make sure the visitors who would normally walk through our doors know that they can still engage with us from the comfort of their homes.  

The Corning Museum of Glass

Currently, The Corning Museum of Glass is closed, and all scheduled classes, events, and programs are canceled until further notice. It’s vital that we do our part to promote social distancing and limit the spread of COVID-19. And while you’re doing your part to stick close to home, we know you’ll be in need of some educational entertainment.   

With our vast and myriad collection of online resources, we’ve got you covered.  

Read more →

The Glass Pipe Community Flowers and Elevates

In my first blog about the acquisition of David Colton’s 2019 Rakow Commission piece “Corning: Untitled“, I touched on some of the genesis story of the glass pipe movement that has been torching across the United States and around the world for about 30 years. But there is a lot more to the story of this passionate community of borosilicate flameworkers, and it’s well worth documenting their development and innovation. That’s why, as the lead flameworker for The Corning Museum of Glass, I go out of my way to follow, participate with, and advocate for this movement.

Eric Goldschmidt teaching a flameworking class at The Studio.

The glass pipe community has helped to move flameworking forward at a greatly accelerated pace recently, and the fine art glass scene is finally paying proper attention. During the movement’s inception, there were some rebellious spirits around Eugene, OR, in the early 1990s who started the exploration with minimal formal training. Now, there are thousands of borosilicate flameworkers melting happily with their torches in their garages, basements, sheds, and even factory-style group studios all around the world. With this growth in craftspeople, we have also seen enormous growth in ancillary markets. Dozens of glass studios now feature pipe-making classes. Suppliers of colored borosilicate glasses have grown their palettes exponentially over the past 20 years to serve this market. A number of tool producers specific to flameworking have grown to serve the equipment needs of the artists.

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The Snowflake Warrior Vase: what is snowflake glass?

Snowflake glass is a unique type of 19th-century Chinese glass that, as the name implies, invokes images of snow. The effect is created with varying amounts of white inclusions (small particles inside the glass) and small air bubbles in a colorless or translucent white base glass. In Chinese, this type of glass goes by multiple names which can be translated as follows: lotus root powder ground (藕粉地), snowstorm (霏雪地), and saliva ground (唾沫地). Some of the names refer to its common use as a background glass with a contrasting overlay color, often red, in cameo-carved objects.

Image of a tall white vase covered by a red overlay with depictions of scenes and Chinese soldiers on horseback.
Snowflake Warrior Vase, possibly Beijing, China, about 1825-1875. Gift of Benjamin D. Bernstein. 57.6.10.

The best-known example of this type of glass in our collection is the Snowflake Warrior Vase, a large cased and cameo-carved vessel that uses snowflake glass as the background layer with a thick red overlay (read more about the story told through its intricate carvings here). While the Warrior Vase is the largest and most impressive object made with snowflake glass in our collection, there are many smaller objects, such as snuff bottles, rings, bracelets, and buckles, which also use snowflake glass.

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Valentines from Visitors

The Education and Interpretation Department at The Corning Museum of Glass likes to experiment with different methods of evaluation. Often these evaluations require participation from our visitors and we learn a great deal from them in the process. It’s also fun to see how they interact with the artworks in the collection.

On Friday, February 14, 2020, we asked our visitors to celebrate Valentine’s Day by placing a heart-shaped post-it note next to their favorite object in the Museum. Our Guest Services team handed out paper hearts all day long, and after the last guest had gone home, members of the Education Department collected and counted the notes. We collected 208 hearts in total, finding them scattered throughout every gallery at the Museum. In some cases, guests even left cryptic messages on their hearts.

We started in the 35 Centuries of Glass Gallery.

There were two objects competing for the top spot in this part of the Museum: Window from Rochroane Castle, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York made by Tiffany Studios, and Ghost Walk under Infinite Darkness by artist Andrew Erdos.

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Featured News

Connect with The Corning Museum of Glass from your Couch: A Guide to our Digital Offerings

Dear blog readers,   

We are in the midst of an unprecedented moment for museums and cultural institutions across the country. With widespread closures due to COVID-19, our most direct way to reach the public is no longer a viable option. We are all doing what we can to make sure the visitors who would normally walk through our doors know that they can still engage with us from the comfort of their homes.  

The Corning Museum of Glass

Currently, The Corning Museum of Glass is closed, and all scheduled classes, events, and programs are canceled until further notice. It’s vital that we do our part to promote social distancing and limit the spread of COVID-19. And while you’re doing your part to stick close to home, we know you’ll be in need of some educational entertainment.   

With our vast and myriad collection of online resources, we’ve got you covered.  

Read more →

The Studio announces 2020 Residencies

Today, The Studio announced the 2020 Artists-in-Residence recipients: twelve artists from around the world who will each spend one month at The Studio researching and experimenting with new techniques to further their work. Included in this group is the first recipient of the newly established Burke Residency created in partnership between The Studio and the Museum of Art and Design (MAD). Additionally, two artists and two scholars have been selected for the David Whitehouse Research Residency for Artists and the David Whitehouse Research Residency for Scholars, respectively. These recipients will spend up to three weeks in the Rakow Library utilizing the vast holdings to inform their practice or area of research. During their time in Corning, each resident will provide a public Lunchtime Lecture describing their inspirations and work at The Studio and the Rakow Library.

Artists-in-Residence at The Studio

New this year: The Burke Residency

The Corning Museum of Glass is going MAD! In partnership with the Museum of Art and Design, The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass is introducing the Burke Residency. This residency will enable one artist from the Burke Prize exhibition at MAD to use the facilities and resources at The Studio to further their artistic exploration. The first recipient of the Burke Residency is Lauren Kalman, a contemporary American visual artist from Detroit, Michigan. Her residency will begin on April 30.

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The Corning Museum of Glass Partners on Glass Competition Show Blown Away 

The Corning Museum of Glass is thrilled to share news of an exciting collaboration on the forthcoming Netflix series, Blown Away, which will bring the art and beauty of glassblowing to television screens around the world. A visually compelling process often described as “mesmerizing” and “captivating,” glassblowing has never been the subject of any major TV programming—until now.  

The art glass competition show created by Marblemedia, an award-winning entertainment company based in Toronto, Canada, Blown Away features a group of 10 highly skilled glassmakers from North America creating beautiful works of art that are assessed by a panel of expert judges. One artist is eliminated each episode until a winner is announced in the tenth and final episode. A co-production with Blue Ant Media of Toronto, Blown Away will air on the Makeful channel in Canada before coming to the Netflix platform worldwide later this year.

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