Glass: so commonplace, it’s taken for granted. It’s in our kitchen cupboards, walls, television cables, and garage doors. We look through it (or into it) every day whether we wear eyeglasses or not. But did you know that
I didn’t either until I visited the Corning Museum of Glass. Can’t wait to go back; two hours there was barely enough to scratch the surface (sorry). But I was able to enjoy a glass-blowing demo with my family from a front-row seat, and dragged my jaw through the extensive historic collections of everything from a reconstructed ancient Egyptian smelting pit to a dazzling Tiffany panel.
Glass is the state of matter that results when a crystalline substance is melted and then cooled so that crystals do not reform. It is amorphous – neither solid nor liquid, though containing properties of both. Hard candy is glass sugar. When made of silica, soda ash, and lime (or other oxides), this amazing substance can be rolled, pulled, pressed, blown, carved, heat-worked, cast, fused, colored, etched, enameled, and cut into all manner of decorative and useful objects.
I’m not quite sure what captivated me so about the CMOG, except for all the history represented in glass. And that glassworking occurs at a nexus of science and art. When a person masters the properties of a material plus the skills necessary to work with it, coaxing it into a product of mastery and beauty – it makes my heart sing! The process highlights man as co-creator with God. (It’s what I wish I could do in so many things – music-making, photography, writing... But enough about me.)
Some of the more remarkably unique items in the collections, that I can remember:
Plus the art glass in the museum shops (GlassMarket).
On my next visit I hope to explore the glassmaking exhibits plus the sculpture and Carder (Steuben) galleries, not to mention all the historic stuff I didn’t get to first time around.
Oh, almost forgot to say: my son made a really nice ornament in the workshop:
