Sandwich Glass Museum Vist
I was in a really shitty mood yesterday and the best way to deal with that was to get out and to go to an exhibition at the Sandwich Glass Museum.
Ostensibly I was going to go see a collection from several contemporary glass bead artists That turned out to be a bit disappointing, quite honestly I can see work of comparable quality at shows AND I get to handle the work AND I get to talk to the artist. So seeing it behind glass was not all that.
However, I enjoyed checking out the Sandwich Glass Museum. At the height, the Boston and Cape Cod Glassworks employed over 500 people and existed between 1825 and 1888. Some of the objects that caught my eye in no particular order,
Ostensibly I was going to go see a collection from several contemporary glass bead artists That turned out to be a bit disappointing, quite honestly I can see work of comparable quality at shows AND I get to handle the work AND I get to talk to the artist. So seeing it behind glass was not all that.
However, I enjoyed checking out the Sandwich Glass Museum. At the height, the Boston and Cape Cod Glassworks employed over 500 people and existed between 1825 and 1888. Some of the objects that caught my eye in no particular order,
- A large glass fish bowl, with many small regular magnifying lenses cut into it. This would have produced an ever-changing patterned effect as the fish swam about.
- A witch ball, described as having been in a Sandwich barn. This fascinated me because that suggests belief. If you just want to hang a glass pretty, you hang it in the parlor. If you want to keep your horses safe from malicious magic, you hang it in the barn.
- Sadly limited information on Hazel Blake French, a woman who was trained in the Arts and Crafts movement and used fragments of old Sandwich glass in her jewelry. This piece is based on her work and conveys some of its delicacy and beauty.
- A wonderful clock that could have come straight from a steampunk novel. The body of the clock is an opaque white glass cylinder slowly turning on a base. Numbers are painted in a circle around the cylinder and as it moves, a stationery vertical pointer running the length of the cylinder shows the time. The best part is this clock has a candle in it so it can be lit at night. I love the combination of mechanical and primitive tech in one object.