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Women in Glasshouses: An Appealing Woman – How to Sell Glass

Corning Glass Works. *Saturday Evening Post*, 1947. CMGL 138926

Is your home clean and stylish? Your husband happy and adoring? Are you thin, white, and good-smelling with helpful and obedient children? Then you must own [inset name of glassware product here]. Ads selling glassware from the early 1900s reflect the hairstyles and clothing of their times but the messages, though often more blatantly expressed than today’s ads, hit a familiar note. Take a contemporary ad for Riedel wine glasses with the tagline: Perfect Partner, Perfect Love, Perfect Glass. What’s the connection between a wine glass and a perfect romantic relationship? Beats me! But since ads began to make psychology a part of their process, this idea of purchasing a product to enhance your life has existed.

To make that work, you need a shared vision of what is ideal. For ads targeting women, the images and ad copy reflected these ideals. According to this trade journal article on how to sell cut glass:

“All women respond to the beautiful…and it is the ambition of every woman to have a pretty dining room. Men admire cut glass too…for the reasons that their wives tell them it is so easily kept clean and pretty; they also like it because as gifts to the wife…it is always certain to please.”
(Jewelers’ Circular, March 15, 1922, p 125)

Dennis and Barbara DuBois during the
New Glass Now celebrations in 2019.

From small treasures, incredible collections can blossom. Such is the case for Ennion Society Members Dennis and Barbara DuBois. In 1985, when Dennis surprised his wife with two perfume bottles, it was the start of glass playing an important role in their lives. The gift was cherished, Dennis was inspired to buy another, and their collection began to take shape. In time, perfume bottles gave way to sculpture. Many years later, Dennis and Barbara have one of the finest collections of contemporary glass art in the United States.

“We bought for a few years and then someone called us ‘glass collectors’ and we looked at each other and said, ‘I guess we are!’” Dennis recalls.

Dennis and Barbara both grew up on the North Shore of Boston, MA, but wouldn’t meet until they each began studying at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Two years later they were married. They moved to Maryland and welcomed children Darcie and Michael to the family. They would finally relocate south to Dallas, TX, in 1981—where Dennis and Barbara still reside.

Women in Glasshouses: Now We’re Cooking with Glass! A Spotlight on Lucy Maltby

Pyrex® revolutionized home cooking and gave bakers and chefs a new tool to fill with ingredients and throw in the oven. Home cooks’ lives were made easier by the efforts of those who developed and tested Pyrex. Dr. Lucy Maltby ran the Pyrex Test Kitchen at Corning Glass Works. She was a pioneer in the 1930s with a PhD in the growing field of home economics, a specialty that sought efficiencies in the modern household. Maltby helped bridged the gap between product developers and Pyrex users.

*Pyrex Prize Recipes*, Greystone Press, NY, 1953.
Courtesy of The Rakow Research Library

She also helped Corning Glass Works sell a lot of Pyrex to consumers, and, as a woman, was paid much less than she was worth. According to the book, Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession, by Sarah Stage and Virginia B. Vincenti: “In comparison to male department heads, Maltby, like the members of her staff, was poorly paid.”¹ By the time Maltby retired in 1965, women in the U.S. were being paid about 60% as much as their male counterparts.²

For this blog, I wanted to dive deeper and learn more about her, but with limited access to print materials in the Rakow Library’s archives (thanks a lot, coronavirus pandemic) I was largely out of luck. However, I did find newspaper articles from all over the country that published Maltby’s recipes, and that got me thinking. What if I got to know Lucy Maltby better by stepping into her shoes and testing out some of her recipes?

Three Unbreakable Layers: The Secret of Corelle

As I walked onto my deck, dinner in hand, ready to enjoy a beautiful summer evening, I looked at my plate and suddenly remembered that my blog on Corelle was due. Dinner would just have to wait.

Like many people, I suspect, when I think of Corelle, I remember eating outside in the summer as a child, sharing family meals around the table, going to potluck dinners, and other pleasant memories. But unlike many people, I suspect, I can’t not think of the incredible science and technology behind Corelle.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of Corelle. To celebrate the occasion, The Corning Museum of Glass presents Dish It! Corelle at 50, an exhibition taking you behind the scenes of one of America’s most cherished brand names.

Known for its simplicity, beauty, practicality, durability, and affordability, Corelle is also a stackable, classy, and glassy dinnerware that comes in more sizes, shapes, and patterns than you might imagine. Dish It! explores the people behind the plates and patterns, how the dishes are made, and the scientific secret to Corelle’s legendary toughness. This latter I can shed a little light on here, but you’ll have to visit to get the full story.

From CMoG with Love: Five Feel-Good Stories

The Corning Museum of Glass may be closed temporarily to guests and staff alike while the COVID-19 pandemic affects our community, but that doesn’t mean the work stops. Our staff and their families have been hard at work in many wonderful ways to ensure that they are doing everything they can to protect our institution, our collections, our communities, and ourselves while maintaining our position as a world leader on glass.

Here are just a few of the things that we’ve been up to.

Masks and gloves boxed up and ready for donation.

1. When the Museum temporarily closed to the public on Monday, March 16, 2020, and asked its staff to work from home, an assessment was made of ways that we could continue to operate and send aid to the local community. Our Operations team searched the campus and located 2,000 masks, 1,000 gloves, and some safety glasses, that could all be donated.

CMoG Keeps You Busy: Things You Can Do at Home

Are you at home and in need of new sources of inspiration? Have you already exhausted your to-do list of house projects, cleaned the kitchen multiple times, finished several books, and asked everyone you know what’s good on Netflix? Well, don’t worry, The Corning Museum of Glass has some fresh ideas for you and the whole family.

We’ve searched our blog archive for a selection of unique things you can do from the comfort of your own home while still practicing social distancing, so let’s see what’s on the agenda for today.

Perhaps it’s time you dusted off all the old Pyrex you have stored away in various cupboards and hidden in the attic and gave everything a thorough clean.

Read this blog about how to correctly clean your Pyrex collection and restore everything to its former glory. Maybe you’ll want to start baking afterward!

Connect with The Corning Museum of Glass from your Couch: A Guide to our Digital Offerings

Dear blog readers,  

We are in the midst of an unprecedented moment for museums and cultural institutions across the country. With widespread closures due to COVID-19, our most direct way to reach the public is no longer a viable option. We are all doing what we can to make sure the visitors who would normally walk through our doors know that they can still engage with us from the comfort of their homes. 

Currently, The Corning Museum of Glass is closed, and all scheduled classes, events, and programs are canceled until further notice. It’s vital that we do our part to promote social distancing and limit the spread of COVID-19. And while you’re doing your part to stick close to home, we know you’ll be in need of some educational entertainment.  

With our vast and myriad collection of online resources, we’ve got you covered. 

The Corning Museum of Glass is thrilled to share news of an exciting collaboration on the forthcoming Netflix series, Blown Away, which will bring the art and beauty of glassblowing to television screens around the world. A visually compelling process often described as “mesmerizing” and “captivating,” glassblowing has never been the subject of any major TV programming—until now.

The art glass competition show created by Marblemedia, an award-winning entertainment company based in Toronto, Canada, Blown Away features a group of 10 highly skilled glassmakers from North America creating beautiful works of art that are assessed by a panel of expert judges. One artist is eliminated each episode until a winner is announced in the tenth and final episode. A co-production with Blue Ant Media of Toronto, Blown Away will air on the Makeful channel in Canada before coming to the Netflix platform worldwide later this year.