Glass & Memories

The other major highlight I looked forward on this part of our trip was the visit to the Corning Glass Museum in Corning, New York. As a young child, seven years old or so, my family went several times to the Corning Glass Works which had tours and some demonstrations. It all seemed almost magical to me at that age and I looked forward to seeing what the Corning Glass Museum had to offer all these many years later.

Although they no longer manufacturer any of their glassware at that location, the museum is extensive with displays of glassware over the centuries and of art in glass. There are also multiple demonstrations of different types of glass making including glass blowing and flame work as well as an excellent demonstration of glass breaking.

We spent much of Monday there and on Tuesday went first to the nearby Rockwell museum which mostly features southwestern art and some history of the southwest and then drove over to the Heritage Village which includes an early one room school and an early blacksmith shop. There we found that the tours were full up with school groups until mid afternoon so we retreated back to the Corning Glass Museum and happily spent several more hours there.

The glass making demonstrations are fascinating and we went to five different shows all together. There is a steady narration explaining all about how and why they are doing various things and you see the glass change from a blob on the end of a pole to acquiring some shape and then to a final finished object, in these pictures it is a fluted bowl.Throughout the process the glass has to be reheated frequently so it does not cool too much and shatter.

The shape of the bowl is beginning to show.

The finished bowl, it's color appearing as it cools.

One of the most interesting exhibits is the current one showing models of sea creatures and plants done in the late 1800's by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.

These models range from familiar creatures such as the octopus (shown at left) and the sea anemone to tiny delicate things I have never heard of.The exhibit includes some damaged pieces that show how they were constructed. 

Both Monday and Tuesday we had lunch in the cafe at the museum which is quite good. The museum clearly gets a lot of international visitors and the demonstrations had an interpreter speaking Mandarin for the many Chinese who were there on tours.

I liked the marine creature models so much that my souvenir from here is a small paperweight with a jellyfish sort of creature inside it which you can see  if you look carefully at the image. I do assure you it is more apparent in reality! It also glows in the dark, a feature I have yet to test as it is safely put away in one of the little nooks in Timmber Wolf.

Yes, I am getting a souvenir from most places and forgot to tell you about the one from the Marine Corps museum which is of course the Marine mascot of a bulldog, complete with camouflage cap and jacket.

From our trip to the Rockwell museum, short as it was, perhaps only an hour and a half or so, I found wooden animal carvings and of course the one of the howling wolf was absolutely irresistable, now to find some where to display it in Timmber Wolf.