CLASSICAL GLASS: BRITISH AND AMERICAN ART GLASS AT UNIVERSITY

Most people have a dusty old glass vase sitting in the attic. It could be only sentimentally valuable or perhaps a prized example of the art glass created during the golden age of Western glassmaking at the end of the 19th century.

One way to find out is to visit "British and American Art Glass 1850-1910," an exhibit opening Sunday at the Southeast Missouri State University Museum.

Organizing the show has been instructive with respect to glass items in her own house, Museum Director Pat Reagan-Woodard says.

"I realized I have things I didn't even know I had."

Almost all the art glass in the show has been borrowed from collectors in Southern Illinois. The exhibit's guest curator is Phillip Egelston, a collector who lives in Jonesboro, Ill.

He is the founding editor of the Mount Washington Art Glass Review.

An opening reception for the show will be held from 2-4 p.m. Sunday at the museum. Joyce Schiller, decorative arts historian at the St. Louis Art Museum, will present a slide lecture at 2, with the exhibit opening afterward.

Egelston also will give a lecture on Mount Washington glass at 2 p.m. Jan. 9.

The museum will display several types of glass, including Mount Washington satin, iridescent, mother of pearl, and enameled vases, brides bowls and salt shakers.

One-hundred-fifty pieces of glass will be on display.

These are the end results of a process primarily based on combining sand, lime and soda and dating back thousands of years to Mesopotamia. In a happy coincidence, Reagan-Woodard notes that the current issue of National Geographic offers a cover story about glass and the extraordinary variety of uses that have been found for this product of such inexpensive raw materials.

Mount Washington is named for the Massachusetts company that helped create the U.S. glassmaking fashion of using unusual colors. The New England Glass Company and glassmaker Joseph Locke also were important innovators.

One of these heat-sensitive glasses, Amberina, is shaded from ruby to amber. Another, Peach Blow, shades from opaque ruby to white.

When a porcelain Peach Blow vase sold for the then-astounding sum of $18,000 in 1886, demand for these glass creations took off.

Most were created in factory atmospheres by only a few English and American companies that competed fiercely with each other. But the glassmakers themselves were highly trained artists and designers who capitalized on the Victorian period's scientific advances to produce an incredible variety of original wares.

One of the best-known of these glassmakers was Frederick Carder, who worked for an English factory called Stevens & Williams. After two decades he left the company to found the now-famous Steuben Glass Works in Corning, N.Y.

Reagan-Woodard said that preparing this exhibit has given her a new appreciation for the artistry involved in making these pieces.

"I hadn't consciously realized that ... those loved treasures that sat in the china cabinet of your grandmother's house were rare and unique," she said.

Though the exhibit covers the heyday of glassmaking, the art and craft have not vanished.

A piece of hand-blown glass made by a friend in St. Louis sits on a shelf in Reagan-Woodard's office. "To watch him blow glass is like watching a ballet dancer," she says.

"...It is an art form based on what these craftsmen did through the centuries."

The museum is located in Memorial Hall. The hours are 9 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays. The museum will be closed for the holidays from Dec. 24-Jan.1.

Admission is free. Group tours can be arranged by calling 651-2260.