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Get Away

Fire, frozen

The icy sparks characteristic of cut glass mesmerize the eye at an exhibit of pieces from the industry's most brilliant period.

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published July 14, 2005

[Images courtesy of the Plant Museum

Ship’s decanter, pattern and manufacturer unknown.

	Basket in the Bengal pattern from J. Hoare & Sons.

TAMPA - Walk into the parlor of the Henry B. Plant Museum and you see something akin to a man-made version of Carlsbad Caverns. Glass objects of every shape and size blaze in vitrines, looking as if they could throw off sparks.

The exhibition features dozens of examples of American cut glass from the decades between 1876 and 1916, known as the Brilliant Period, a time when industrialization was creating new fortunes for families with a penchant for spending them in ostentatious ways.

The number of patterns available in cut glass indicates Americans' appetite for luxury goods; more than 2,000 patterns were developed during the 40-year period by dozens of companies, along with a dazzling, sometimes perplexing number of vessels bearing them.

Almost all were utilitarian, sometimes outlandishly so. Putting celery in an oval dish made sense. But jamming a wet umbrella into a delicate, three-foot-high fluted container or pouring hot coffee into a crystal pot?

So it was.

Because, expensive as it might be, cut glass was considered decorative and replaceable.

The Plant Museum show features cut glass made only in the United States, which in the mid 19th century became the center of production, edging out Great Britain. American wealth wasn't the only reason; an archaic European system that was fundamentally a form of indentured service sent hundreds of skilled workers across the Atlantic. The job still had sweatshop stature, but there was a better chance of striking out on one's own, as many skilled cutters did.

John Hoare and Thomas Hawkes, both Irish, are two artisans among the most prominent group of immigrants, who founded their own successful companies, and glass from their workrooms is represented here. A loving cup, a presentation piece at weddings, from the Hoare Company is encased in a second layer of cranberry glass (color became popular in the late 1800s) and etched with a wedding ring pattern and mounted with silver. The Russian pattern, introduced by Hawkes' firm in 1882, became the rage a few years later when President Grover Cleveland ordered a set of glassware in it. And Hawkes scored again in 1889 when its Chrysanthemum pattern, seen in a decanter set at the museum, won the design prize at the World's Fair in Paris.

Another giant was the Libbey Glass Co., which had the marketing genius to set up a pavilion at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. An exhibition factory operated day and night as thousands of visitors poured through to watch every step of the process, from blowing blanks (the unadorned vessels) to each stage of cutting and polishing.

The Plant Museum shows a short video from Waterford Crystal, the only company today still using those original methods, along with display dishes sectioned to demonstrate the object's progress as it evolved from plain to fancy.

Most of the pieces here are undated; their approximate eras of origin can sometimes be discerned by the pattern. The more formal, symmetrical ones are usually earlier; realistic fruits and flowers came later.

Tastes change. As the century turned, the ornate ostentation of the Victorians yielded to new sensibilities. Even though cut glass designers catered to new ideas of beauty, simplifying their patterns, the 20th century was moving toward the jazz age, and glassware became as sleek as a flapper's bias-cut silk dress. Companies closed or adapted. But the Brilliant Period, beautifully crystallized in this exhibition, endures as a finely etched remembrance of times past.

- Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

REVIEW: "American Brilliant Period: Rich Cut Glass" is at the Henry B. Plant Museum on the University of Tampa campus, 401 W Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, through Dec. 31. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 adults, $2 children under 12. (813) 254-1891.

[Last modified July 13, 2005, 09:36:06]