That Englishman was Frederick Carder. Born in the pottery region of Staffordshire in 1863, Carder left school when he was 14 to work at Leys Pottery, which was the family business. Soon disenchanted with the pottery business, he studied chemistry, metallurgy and technology at night school at the Stourbridge School of Art and, in 1880 – whilst still a teenager – he became a cutter for the firm of Stevens & Williams. Renowned cameo glass artist John Northwood was made artist manager at the firm in 1882 (he remained there until his death in 1902) and Carder became a draftsman and designer under the master. His first accepted designs were in the then fashionable cut crystal, which he considered ‘the quintessence of vulgarity’.
– Fred Carder on his first days at Stevens & Williams
In his spare time Carder travelled to museums across Europe, where he would admire other works in glass and document his inspiration in a small notebook. He also bought a small furnace to test glass, ceramics or any other suitable material available to him, starting experiments with the colourising agents of glass that ultimately led to the production of coloured glassware.
When glassmaker Thomas G. Hawkes saw Carder’s pieces whilst on a business trip he decided to lure him to the United States, and despite an offer from Stevens & Williams to triple his wages if he stayed, in 1903 Carder arrived in New York with his wife Annie and children Gladys, Stanley and Cyril to take up the position of director of the newly-formed Steuben Glass Works. For the next thirty years he would oversee the factory’s operations, developing a wide range of shapes, patterns and colours, with some of the most popular pieces developing from the experiments Carder had initially started back at Stevens & Williams.
Following the popular stylistic trends of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, he designed functional tableware, dresser sets and lighting devices in a variety of richly hued formulas; the company produced a staggering 7000 varieties of vases, bowls, goblets, candlesticks and other items that were sold in department stores from New York to San Francisco by the firm’s travelling salesmen.
Louis Comfort Tiffany had introduced his luminous Favrile glass at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and seeing it had spurred Carder to continue working on his own formula. It took him ten years, but when he finally introduced his Aurene range of glass it was so technically advanced and commercially successful that in 1913 Tiffany Studios levied a Bill of Complaint against Steuben (the complaint was subsequently dropped in 1914). When Carder and Tiffany met years later at a medal-awards ceremony in New York, Carder said they got on famously, shook hands and ‘agreed to let bygones by bygones.’
Whilst undertaking his experiments on iridised glass, Carder also established an acid-etching department at Steuben which operated continuously under his management. His work typically comprised two layers of glass of different colours, with the top layer selectively coated in wax ink and then submerged in acid. The uncoated portions of the top layer would be removed, revealing a design in relief. Over 300 names for these etched designs are in the factory records.
While working at Steuben, Fred Carder developed more than 100 new glass colours.
As a businessman, Carder was involved in almost every aspect of Steuben Glass, from designing and selling the glass to hiring and managing employees across the company. He noticed that buyers consistently paid higher prices for wares with elegant names, and the pieces listed as ‘sculptured’ were uniformly more expensive than those simply listed as ‘etched’. He also often remarked that when a colour or shape wasn’t selling as well as he thought it should, he doubled the price and ‘it sold like a shot.’
Aurene was the first of Carder’s coloured glass creations for Steuben. Inspired by the iridescence of Roman glass, it was named for its origins: ‘aur’ was taken from ‘aurum’, the Latin word for gold, and ‘ene’, the last three letters of the old English word ‘schene’ for sheen, combining both Roman and English inspiration.
Its iridescent surface was produced by spraying the glass ‘at the fire’ with stannous chloride or lead chloride and reheating it under controlled atmospheric conditions. Aurene was developed in 1904; the name Gold Aurene was patented in that year, with Blue Arene (created with the addition of cobalt oxide to Gold Aurene) being patented in 1905.
A type of translucent white glass similar to opal glass, alabaster glass was first produced in Bohemia in the 19th century. In the 1920s Carder introduced his own form of alabaster glass at Steuben Glass Works. Carder’s alabaster glass had an iridescent finish created by spraying the object with stannous chloride and then reheating it; it was often decorated with complete or partial casings of ruby, green, yellow or brown combined with linings.
Another of the earlier creations was Cintra glass. Most Cintra was produced by rolling the parison (partly inflated gather of hot glass) of crystal over powdered coloured glass that had been spread on the marver (the slab on which the glassblower rolls the hot glass). The parison and layer of powdered glass were then covered with a thin layer of (usually) colourless glass that held the powdered glass in place and added an optical quality to the finished piece.
Sometimes described as ‘Cintra with bubbles,’ Cluthra glass deliberately made use of inclusions. Produced by mixing a chemical – probably potassium chloride – with the powdered glass on the marver, the bubbles formed when the glass was exposed to the heat of the parison. A layer of crystal was gathered over the parison to encrust with the bubbly powdered glass, securing the glass and bubbles together. Carder believed that bubbles gave life to the glass, but not everyone agreed. He introduced Cluthra after getting tired of customers who complained about an occasional unwanted bubble that had evaded inspection, saying, ‘Make ‘em pay more’ for the bubbly pieces.
Carder often boasted of Steuben that he ‘bought the materials, built the glass furnace, and retired 40% of the $50,000 indebtedness in the first year of operation.’
The Steuben factory also accepted special orders from customers – almost 600 bespoke orders were filled – some of which are documented with interesting correspondence. When a customer of the firm George Watts & Son wanted a set of blue cut to clear glass tableware, Watts wrote to Steuben: ‘Our client should also have a sherry glass as well as the other items ordered. She has not admitted it yet, but it might be well for you to send us a drawing of what you would suggest for this use in the pattern, for we think with a little proper salesmanship we might get that item added to the order.’
Later, when the same customer decided she would like a pair of candelabra, Watts replied when in receipt of a drawing to say that: ‘We are sorry we cannot develop the same enthusiasm as we did for the stemware, for the obvious reason that the price was such that we were afraid the customer might have a stroke, although she is a sport about paying large prices.’ Custom made glass did not come cheap, but it did come with a hand written letter from Carder that said the items had been designed to order and were ‘an exclusive thing for the customer alone’. He also noted, ‘I feel that she has some of the best work I have done in this line.’
Steuben Glass had been acquired by Corning Glass Works in 1918, but it was in 1933 that a dramatic reorganisation took place: production moved entirely into a highly refractive optical glass that became the gift of choice for weddings, retirements and special occasions for much of the 20th century. The reason for this shift of direction was threefold. There was the development of the new form of crystal known as 10M; it offered perfect clarity, brilliant refractive powers and was much stronger than ordinary glass. The firm had also been losing money for a number of years as consumer spending on luxury goods dropped with the worldwide depression. And the public seemed to have lost interest generally in coloured glass.
The design philosophy at Steuben Glass changed radically. Carder left the firm and Steuben shifted from operating with a single designer creating designs for numerous types, colours and finishes, to many designers who produced designs only for the colourless crystal. Art glass was made either as moulded and polished abstract sculptures and figurines, or pieces for which Steuben invited artists to work in the firm’s crystal, while many of Carder’s original designs for coloured glass were used for the new 10M colourless glass.
Frederick Carder’s love affair with glass had begun when he visited John Northwood in his studio and saw a glass replica of the Portland Vase, considered the world’s greatest masterpiece of Roman cameo glass. It was an experience he later described as being ‘struck with the possibilities of glass’. He was 16 and it was a passion that would last a lifetime.
The Corning Museum of Glass houses the largest display of early Steuben glass in the world.
After he left Steuben in 1932, Carder became the design director at the Corning Glass Works where he embarked on a new interest that saw him experimenting with clear lead glass works produced through the lost wax process. His works became increasingly more complex, from two-dimensional plaques in low relief to hollow objects and sculptures in the round, developing and refining innovative techniques still used today.
He worked well into old age, creating smaller cast glass sculptures and one-off pieces until he finally retired at the age of 96 to spend his time painting. As expected, he turned out to be a prodigious painter, with dozens of works stacked against the walls from which he often invited friends to ‘pick out a painting’.
A set of 12 cocktail glasses in alabaster glass, a style introduced at Steuben Glass Works by Carder in the 1920s.
Available from Bell’s Antiques, Tyabb, Victoria for $2,495.
Tel: 0416 254 625.
