Carder Steuben Glass Association tours Paul Vickers Gardner Glass Center
Members of the Carder Steuben Glass Association (CSGA) were on the Alfred University campus Thursday (Sept. 7) to tour the Paul Vickers Gardner Glass Center as part of the group’s three-day 2023 Symposium being held Sept. 7-9.
The CSGA, based in Corning, NY, encourages and promotes the collection of Steuben Glass developed by Frederick Carder. Carder was a glassmaker, glass designer, and glass artist who was active in the glass industry in both England and the United States, notably for Stevens & Williams and Steuben, respectively.
Carder's work remains popular among collectors and can be found in numerous museum collections, including The Corning Museum of Glass. Several pieces are included in the Paul Vickers Gardner Glass Center (PVGGC), named for Alfred University alumnus Paul Vickers Gardner ’30 (B.F.A., ceramic art; ’85 HD). Carder mentored Gardner, who worked with Carder in the 1930s as a glass technologist before becoming the first curator of glass and ceramics at the Smithsonian Institution, where he served for nearly three decades (1948-77).
Throughout his career, Vickers understood and promoted the distinctive intersection that connected glass art with science and engineering. His financial support funded the establishment of the Paul Vickers Gardner Glass Center, with a mission of enhancing education in glass art and science through exhibition and lecture series, and archival resources.
In 1971, Gardner published the definitive book on Carder, The Glass of Frederick Carder. Gardner’s bequest in support of the PVGGC consists of his personal collection of Carder Steuben glass, other art glass, books, catalogs, lectures, photographs, drawings, slides, and videotapes.
Among the collection of glass art at the PVGGC are approximately 80 pieces of Carder’s work. The Carder Steuben Glass Association last visited Alfred University 20 years ago, for the group’s 2003 Symposium. At that time, the complete PVGGC collection had been in storage for several years in what amounted to a closet sized space in Scholes Library. It remained in storage until this year, when it was relocated and displayed in an open space in Binns-Merrill Hall.
Annika Blake-Howland, a glass science engineering doctoral student at Alfred University and a coordinator of Paul Vickers Gardner Glass Center (PVGGC), talks with a group of Carder Steuben Glass Association members who visited the PVGGC Thursday afternoon.
The contingent of about a dozen members of the CSGA who visited the PVGGC Thursday studied the collection of Carder’s work, as well as historical records and personal writings of Gardner and Carder. Annika Blake-Howland is an Alfred University doctoral student in glass science. As part of her PhD studies, she is working for the PVGGC as primary contact for the facility and hosted the CSGA visit on Thursday.