Louisville Glass Works closed permanently by 1873, evidently as a result of the recession of that year, and never reopened. The invention of the automatic bottle machine in 1903 eventually put glassblowers out of work forever. Also in 1903, Emil and Tony Stanger helped make the largest glass bottle ever blown, at “108 GAL”, in Millville, New Jersey, later exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. (It was dethroned in 1992 during Millville’s “Glass Blast Weekend”.) The actual site of the original Kentucky Glass Works factory, razed three or four times since the 1870s, is almost directly across the street, and slightly south of, Louisville’s “Extreme Park” built in 2001.

Additional images and more information on “Louisville Glass Factories of the 19th Century” can be found in David Whitten’s three-part article published in 2005 by Bottles and Extras, the official magazine of The Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors, which is available online at:
http://www.blm.gov/historic_bottles/pdffiles/LouisvilleGlass1_Whitten.pdf
http://www.blm.gov/historic_bottles/pdffiles/LouisvilleGlass2_Whitten.pdf
http://www.blm.gov/historic_bottles/pdffiles/LouisvilleGlass3_DWhitten.pdf

GII-24 "double eagle" flask

From 1850 to 1901; at least seven glass factories operated in Louisville and two others just across the Ohio River in New Albany, Indiana. At most bottle-making plants in Louisville the majority of workers were of German heritage. John Stanger, one of the principal proprietors when the original Kentucky Glass Works was founded, was a grandson of one of the seven Stanger brothers who emigrated with their parents and a sister in 1768 from Dornhagen, Germany, traveling on the ship Betsy from Rotterdam to the Philadelphia area.

During the late 1500s and early 1600s, the Stenger family of master glassblowers had moved into the Alsace-Lorraine-Moselle area of Europe, helping establish several glass factories in France and Germany. (Stengers remaining in Wingen opened a glass factory which later became associated with Lalique glass.) The Stengers were Lutheran and did not speak French. In Colonial America, the spelling of the family name became Stanger; both the Stanger and Stenger glassmaking families in the United States all seem to be related if traced back far enough. The seven Stanger brothers were brought to America, possibly as indentured servants, to work in the Wistarburgh Glass Works, near Alloway in southern New Jersey. They moved on to start other glassworks in New Jersey, especially in Gloucester County near a town that eventually became known as Glassboro. Here began 148 years of continuous glassmaking, the most extensive and best equipped center in the nation. Distinct styles and techniques for decorating free blown glass emerged, now commonly referred to as the “South Jersey” tradition.

GII-33 "ribbed" flask

John H. Stanger is considered the most important person involved in the glass manufacturing of nineteenth-century Louisville. Born in New Jersey about 1814, he moved to Pennsylvania, working as a glassblower in various positions around the Pittsburgh area from about 1838 through the 1840s. Stanger moved to Louisville in 1849 or early 1850, where he remained active for more than thirty years. He was connected with the Kentucky (later Louisville) Glass Works as late as 1869 or 1870; worked in New Albany at W.C. DePauw’s Star Glass Works from about 1871 to 1877; started up a new factory in Louisville called Southern Glass Company (or Southern Glass Works) with veteran glassblower Charles Doyle, his son-in-law, staying until the summer of 1879; then managed the new Kentucky Glass Works Company [not to be confused with the original Kentucky Glass Works!]  at 4th & C Streets until he “retired” on December 9, 1879, according to a January 4, 1880, announcement in the Louisville  Commercial. His “retirement” turned out to be a short one, however, since in the early 1880s Stenger moved back across the river (again) to DePauw’s American Plate Glass Company (formerly Star Glass), finally leaving about 1884. He passed away  in New Albany on November 3, 1887. His sons, along with other family members, also became professional glassblowers, working in at least five different factories in Louisville, New Albany, and Marion, Indiana.

More on glass flasks and the factories of Louisville will be in our next blog. In the meantime, you can find some general information on figured flasks, including more images of a Kentucky Glass Works double eagle flask, at:
http://www.sha.org/bottle/liquor.htm#Historical Flasks

At the time this article was published, Mary Daniel Lilly at 77 was only semi-retired. One day a week “‘I still look after Allie,’” the Fisk’s daughter, “‘which I promised her mother when she was sick that I would do.’” However, most of Lilly’s time went to numerous volunteer activities, which she had begun fifteen years earlier as a way to “help cope with the death of her husband of 40 years, Marcellus.” Her remarkable energy and “dedication to the community has not gone unnoticed. In 1989 she was named Lexington’s Outstanding Volunteer by the Volunteer Center of the Bluegrass.” Fisk painted another portrait of the young Mary Daniel, too, seen at:  http://www.edwardfisk.com/portrait/pages/port05.htm

I guess we will never know exactly what caught Fisk’s eye on that day in 1938, yet the indomitable spirit he clearly captured still illuminated Mary Daniel Lilly’s life fifty years later, just as it does ours now.

Silhouette of Cassius Clay by William Henry Brown, 1845

The arrival of almost 120 pieces of nineteenth-century Kentucky furniture, silver, ceramics, textiles, paintings, and works on paper. This extraordinary trove of great Kentucky art was given to the Speed by Bob and Norma Noe. The Noes, both Kentucky natives, assembled the collection over the course of thirty years. Their generous gift makes the Speed’s Kentucky collection the best in the country.

Mason-Fleming-Lewis County, Kentucky, chest of drawers, 1795-1810

Over sixty highlights from the collection are now on view in the exhibition, Kentucky Antiques from the Noe Collection: A Gift to the Commonwealth. If you want to hear Bob Noe talk about his experiences as a collector, check out this and this.

To learn more about the Noes’ gift, read the whole press release.

Preparing quilt for display

One of the best Kentucky quilts (and, in my opinion, the best quilt in the exhibition) arrived just a week before the show opened after it had…sneaked away…for several years! It was made between 1860 and 1870, probably in Henderson County, Kentucky (though possibly in Jefferson County). Its design is remarkably similar to a Logan County quilt by Virginia Mason Ivey in the Speed’s collection. The exhibition brings these two wonderful quilts side-by-side for the first time.

Quilt, 1860-1870, probably by Emma Bridges, Henderson County, Kentucky

Quilt, about 1860, by Virginia Mason Ivey, Logan County, Kentucky

Summer Landscape: The House on the Ridge

“The project is important to me because Harlan Hubbard was a very prolific, but underappreciated artist,” Meg explained. “He had a remarkable career as an artist and writer, living most of his life near the Ohio River. The life and landscape of the river is explored deeply in his art. His paintings are a revealing counterpart to the two books he authored, Shantyboat and Payne Hollow, and the four volumes of his journals that were published afterwards. Wendell Berry celebrated his life in a lecture series and a book, Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work. Yet his art never achieved the exposure that his writings did. He documented the scenes of Campbell County and Trimble County in a way that is more true to nature than a photograph, and produced paintings that express his love of the landscape there. The paintings that are now in the KOAR database were shown at the Hopewell Museum in 2008, in the exhibit, “Harlan Hubbard: A Life in the Landscape, 1900-1988″. They are from private collections. The Lucille Little Fine Arts Library has a digital image database of paintings by Harlan Hubbard from regional collections. For more information, go to http://libguides.uky.edu/HarlanHubbard“

Steep Road

You can see a few examples of Harlan Hubbard’s paintings on our Recent Additions webpage, or you can search the database directly for a look at more of his pre-1950 work by entering “Harlan Hubbard” in the Quick Search text box. We warmly welcome the Lucille Caudill Little Fine Arts Library as a new KOAR Partner and look forward to adding more of their images in future. We hope that you enjoy discovering the art of Harlan Hubbard, too.

KOAR now features several highlights from Kentucky Historical Society’s exhibition, Great Revivals: Kentucky Decorative Arts Treasures. Curated by Estill Curtis Pennington, the exhibition brings many of KHS’s best pieces together in a single installation at the Old State Capitol in Frankfort.

Among my favorites: a terrific example of “art-carved” furniture with carved decoration by Kate Perry Mosher of Covington, Kentucky (located just across the river from Cincinnati). I first saw this cabinet several years ago in one of KHS’s storage areas and was blown away the quality of Mosher’s work. Her carvings of herons, Kentucky cane plants, and other plant forms reflect great skill and a great eye for design.

Cabinet with carving by Kate Mosher, 1892

Mosher learned from a master: Cincinnati’s Benn Pitman, the godfather of Cincinnati’s late nineteenth-century art-carved furniture movement. Pitman established a wood carving program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1873. Like Mosher, many students of art carving were women. She ranked among the best, exhibiting her work at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

Many of the pieces can be tied to particular locales, owners, and even makers. In some cases, the connection comes through a piece’s provenance. One of my favorites: an elegant gaming table that descended in the Brown family of Frankfort.

Brown Family Gaming Table, 1800-1810

In other cases, the owners’ passion for research helps us reconnect the furniture to its original context. An imposing tall clock, made as early as the late eighteenth century (a fairly rare thing with surviving Kentucky furniture), can be tied to William Calk, an early settler, thanks to the collectors’ research. Calk’s 1775 account of his journey from Prince William County, Virginia to Kentucky makes for interesting reading.

Calk Family Tall Clock, 1790-1810

Along with furniture, new additions from the same collection include several examples of decorated stoneware.

Along with the work of well-known Kentucky silversmiths like Asa Blanchard (about 1770-1838), the exhibition also includes pieces by less familiar makers like Charles Plimpton (working from at least 1814). Judging by period advertisements, Plimpton was more active in Lexington as a “silver plater” than as a silversmith, perhaps explaining the relative scarcity of silver pieces with his mark.

Charles Plimpton's mark

Other highlights include: an extremely rare coffee or hot water urn bearing the mark of Lexington’s George Stewart (active in Kentucky from about 1857 until about 1864), a Stewart horse racing trophy for the 1846 Chiles Stake, and an Asa Blanchard teapot that retains an old, and perhaps original, cloth strainer bag mounted on a silver collar.

Photos of pieces in the exhibition, including images of their marks, will appear on the Kentucky Online Arts Resource in early 2011. (As you can see from the image below, photographing the pieces wasn’t a point-and-shoot operation!)

Photographing a George Sharp, Jr. pitcher