toledo is known as the glass capital of the world because from that one company that came here in 1888 the libya glass company came all of these tertiary companies that have built this economy of glass here

in toledo. so we are standing in the glass pavilion, which is part of the toledo museum of art. well, the purpose really is to showcase the glass collection, which is one of the significant parts of our collection here. it's actually almost a third of the overall collection here in toledo. it's also one of the larger collections of glass in the united states and the city has a wonderful history of glass both in terms of the industrial contribution in toledo and also in terms of what the museum presents edward german libby was our founder and edward libbey was the proprietor of the libbey glass company and it was through his ties with the libbey glass company that he made his fortune and because he and his wife had no children. he left that fortune to the museum and he also gave us a large both glass collection and paintings collection edward german libbey. he was born in 1854 the new

england glass company, which was the precursor to the lily glass company started in 1818, edward drummond libby's father william langdon libbey became the agent for the new england last company in 1872, and so he learned the glass business from his father and in 1883 his father suddenly passed away unexpectedly, and he took over the business in 1888. he brought the libbe glass company here to toledo because number one there was a natural gas in nearby finley. there was high silicose sand available, which is a donut of making glass plus the businessman of toledo sweetened the pot a little bit and gave him the site for the factory as well as sites for tom has workers to build houses once they are here in toledo it. kind of faltered a bit the

workers were unhappy because they didn't have their extended family around and it was not a highly developed area. so all the amenities that they were used to in the boston area. we're not available in toledo. and so he lost a bunch of workers. so he went down to west virginia to recruit more workers and not only did he recruit the workers that he needed. but he also recruited a man named michael owens michael owens in those early days ran the factory and libby was the one who led the marketing campaign and he was able to go to places like the world. errors in order to put the libbey glass company on the international stage and the place where he did that first was the 1893 chicago world's fair and he built this whole pavilion a whole glass furnace

and studios so that from soup to nuts they could see glass being made and then of course stop at a gift shop at the end and purchase a piece of glass this turned out to be wildly successful. and not only do they have the opportunity to see glass being made. they also were able to see this wonderful novelty that nobody had seen before which was something called the glass dress. they got this technology where you spun glass thread, very very thin so glasses very malleable and you can stretch it and stretch it and stretch it to the point that it's the thread. did was they pulled all of these threads and they wove it into fabric and then they made this fabric into literally a dress that could be worn and it's a phenomenal dress. we are in front of really one of the best known works in our collection one of the most

beloved works in the collection and it almost needs no introduction. this is known as the libbey punch bowl. it was made in 1904 by the libbey company specifically for the world's fair that was happening in st. louis that year oftentimes companies would make really grand works for the fair as a way of showcasing their greatest abilities and what they could really do. so this is a piece of cut glass it would have been blown as what was called a blank without any decoration on it and the glass blowers would have been passed it off to the cutters and then that would have gone through several stages of cutting where you first rough out a design and then you go in and you really make the cuts deep and precise more precise the wonderful thing about cut glass is that it has this really brilliant look to

it. so when the light shines on it it reflects and refracts and it makes this kind of beautiful. look so the type of glass that libby was making here at that time period was brilliant cut glass. it's what you think of as that very heavy sparkly with the beautiful designs that just look like diamonds when the light hit it and so from the 1880s until probably the 1920s was the era of brilliant cut glass and that was really the time that that libbey was marketing his wares. they were marketed to the higher class of people so they were sold in jewelry stores and there were catalogs that people could pick out what pattern they wanted and then they orders would go back to the factory and it would then be shipped to the client as time went forward it

changed what libbey glass created there were still a few high-end things that were hand blown hand. at pam engraved, but they quickly switched over to things that would make a profit and continue the company going and so it became much more mechanized during that time in between the death of mr. libbey in 1925. and then the start of world war ii. when you think about glass in toledo and the phrase the glass city it is because the libbey glass company was kind of the colonel that then outgrew out the not just the lily glass company, but owens, illinois was a bottle making company and it grew out of michael owens's inventions for the automatic bottle machine company out of the roots of the living class company comes libya once ford, which was a flat glass company,

and then there's owens corning fiberglass. so fiberglass was another way of using glass and an industrial setting so it grew and so it wasn't just the lily glass company. it was all of these other glass companies that were outcroppings of that one company that came here in 1888. well, toledo has a long history of gloss making both in terms of its industry and then again in the 1960s when a series of workshops happened here spearheaded by a ceramics professor named harvey littleton. so this is the case of works by what we would call pioneers of the early studio glass movement toledo as a city and the museum played an important role in this watershed moment in the history of studio glass, which really kind of takes us back to the

early 1960s in 1962. there was a man who taught ceramics at the university of wisconsin-madison. who really? into experiment with glass and he worked with the director then at the tma the toledo museum a man named ottawa whitman to inacciate initiate a series of workshops. and the first one harpment happened in march of 1962 and harvey sent out a letter to a group of other ceramics professors around the country and invited them to come to toledo and participate. in a glass bowling workshop where they would experiment and so they came here in set up a furnace they built a furnace. they didn't know how to melt glass and so they went to a local scientist a man named dominic libino who worked at a company called john's manville that made fiberglass and they began to experiment there was a retired glass blower named harvey leafgreen who worked at libbey he came in and helps them

kind of get the hang of what one does with the blow pipe and they glue things like these three objects that you see laying on the deck here. they might look like they're rather primitive, but the idea here was these people were experimenting with boss making harvey would go on to develop a very sophisticated body of work and other artists that you see represented in the the case. we're also making glass in the 1960s and 1970s. so when harvey had these workshops, he had this successful moment in experimenting with glass. he returned to his campus in wisconsin and set up the first university program in the country for teaching glass blowing others. would then follow while you still see in many people's work the focus on the traditional glass form like the vessel. you also see this tremendous range in which people are

working today in very sculptural way and abstract ways. i mean the possibilities with glass of really just kind of loaded in the last 15 almost 60 years from its beginning until now the glass industry has diversified. however the base is still here. we still love our libbey glass and this beautiful glass pavilion that i'm standing in is very much a monument to the marriage of industry and beauty it's a wonderful testament to our toledo's history and that fundamental history of glass.