Designer of the Month: Frederick Carder

Week 4: Corning Glass Works

Frederick Carder, Vase with Reserve Pattern, 1913-1918. Blown, iridized, etched. Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, New York (82.4.240F, bequeathed by Frank and Mary Elizabeth Reifschlager). Lent to The Corning Museum of Glass (L.1262.4.2001). Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

January 8, 1918, was the date that Steuben Glass Works became the Steuben Division of Corning Glass Works, a firm that had been founded by the Houghton family in Corning, NY in 1868.[1] Although this was a blow for Frederick Carder, he not only remained managing director of the plant, but was still given fairly free reign to continue on with the company, despite the new management.[2] During this time, Carder continued to design all of the forms and decorations that were to be manufactured, with his policy being that he would then continue to produce an object as long as it was sold.[3] His reasoning during the period of 1903 to 1932 was that "designs discontinued themselves," remarking that that "sometimes when a vase or stemware group doesn't move, I double the price and it sells like a shot!"[4]

Steuben Division, Corning Glass Works, Intarsia vase, 1920s. H. 17.4 cm. (69.4.221). Bequest of Gladys C. Welles. Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

Just prior to the 1920s, public taste began to change towards functionality and modernism, with the elaborate decorations derived from traditional style loosing their appeal.[5] In 1932, when Steuben's new president decided to concentrate on colorless glass, Carder left Steuben entirely to become design director of Corning Glass Works.[6] Although many expected the move, which was supposed to place Carder into semi-retirement (he was 69 at the time), to essentially mean the end of his career, Carder's work was far from done.[7] He immediately started converting his new office into a studio-workshop, surreptitiously installing enough equipment in the office to experiment with glass casting, developing architectural glass applications.[8] Carder had been interested in using glass as an architectural element in buildings for years. He was finally successful in having architects use Steuben glass as both an interior and exterior feature during the 1930s, with his largest installation for sculptured glass panels for the RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Center (now the GE Building and home to NBC Studios).[9] In 1959, at the age of 96, Carder's glassmaking career ended when he finally closed his studio and "retired."[10]


[1] Paul V. Gardner, "Carder in America: The Start-Up," The Glass of Frederick Carder (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1971), 42.


[2] Ibid., 42-3.


[3] Ibid., 49.


[4] Ibid., 49.

[5] Ibid., 50.


[6] The Corning Museum of Glass online, "Frederick Carder Gallery," http://www.cmog.org/dynamic.aspx?id=196 (accessed March 24, 2011).

[7] Paul V. Gardner, "Carder in America: The Start-Up," The Glass of Frederick Carder (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1971), 51.

[8] Ibid., 53-4.


[9] Ibid., 121.


[10] The Corning Museum of Glass online, "Frederick Carder Gallery," http://www.cmog.org/dynamic.aspx?id=196 (accessed March 24, 2011).