Pittsburgh shows glass past

This photo released by Carnegie Museum of Art shows the "Zanfirico Pear, 1994," a glass pear blown by Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick. Pittsburgh was called the Iron City and then the Steel City, but for a century Pittsburgh and the rest of western Pennsylvania was famed for another material known more for beauty than strength: glass. The city makes a bid to reclaim its former glory with "Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass!" featuring several large glass art exhibits opening in May, the five-day annual conference of the Glass Art Society in June and a host of other events during the rest of the year. (AP Photo/Carnegie Museum of Art)

E-mail this story

Print this story

PITTSBURGH (AP) - It was called the Iron City and then the Steel City, but for a century, Pittsburgh and the rest of western Pennsylvania was famed for another material known more for beauty than strength: glass.

The city makes a bid to reclaim its former glory this year with "Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass!" - featuring several large glass art exhibits opening in May, the five-day annual conference of the Glass Art Society in June and a host of other events during the rest of the year.

"When people see glass art, especially at the scale they're going to see it this year, it's life-changing," Marguerite Jarrett Marks, director of the initiative, in which more than 70 organizations are taking part, said. "It's just so beautiful and exquisite."

A centerpiece will be an exhibition by West Coast artist Dale Chihuly at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, placing at least 40 of his intricate blown glass sculptures among plants in the conservatory greenhouses.

Richard Piacentini, executive director of the Phipps, said that unlike other outdoor art exhibitions, in which the pieces must be placed among existing vegetation, the artist is helping to choose the plants to set off his works, which are characterized by flowing, organic forms.

"That's why they look so great in a conservatory, because they actually look like they belong there," Piacentini said.

Seeing the works in evening, when all are lit, he said, will be "like a totally different exhibit."

Organizers hope to draw hundreds of thousands of people to the city for "Chihuly at Phipps: Gardens & Glass." They will have a wealth of other activities from which to choose, such as "Viva Vetro! Glass Alive! Venice America," opening in May at the Carnegie Museum of Art,.

will show that Pittsburgh and Venice have more in common than bridges since both have been centers of the glass industry. More than 125 works will show the links between Venetian and U.S. artists over the last half-century.

n "Allure of Japanese Glass," also opening in May at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, will feature 17 contemporary Japanese glass artists, many of whom have never had work shown in the United States.

n "Metamorphosis: A Celebration of the Bead," opening in June at the Senator John Heinz Regional History Center, will exhibit work by noted glass bead-makers.

The glass center will also be providing pieces for the set design for "Sound of a Voice," a two-act opera based on Japanese stories adapted by playwright David Henry Hwang for music by Philip Glass.

Besides the exhibitions, the 37th annual Glass Art Society Conference is expected to draw 1,500 artists and industry representatives. The conference will include lectures and demonstrations on blown- and flame-worked glass as well as cast glass and flat glass techniques, and participants will be able to tour glass factories and collectors' homes.

The conference harks back to the national glass tableware trade shows held in Pittsburgh for more than 70 years. By the 1920s, more than a quarter of the nation's annual glass sales took place during the two-week show, according to the permanent "Glass: Shattering Notions" exhibit at the Heinz center, which gives an overview of the industry's history in western Pennsylvania and adjacent areas.

"It's the center of the industry from about 1840 at least until the 1930s," said Anne Madarasz, museum division director at the center. "In 1920, 80 percent of the glass made in America is made in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and West Virginia, with Pittsburgh as kind of the capital and marketing center of that region."

The area produced reflective tiles that line New York City's Lincoln and Holland tunnels, 250,000 light bulbs for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and glass tableware for presidents from James Madison to Franklin D. Roosevelt. As recently as 1976, a company based in suburban Pittsburgh made 25 high-strength windows for the refurbished crown of the Statue of Liberty.

The exhibit displays glass artifacts such as early 19th century whale oil lamps, a green glass rolling pin (which allowed quick cooling to keep dough from sticking) and glass target balls used for skeet shooting before clay pigeons were produced for that purpose.

"People forget ... you didn't have all the alternative materials you have today - acrylics and plastics and aluminum cans and all the paper cups and Styrofoam," Madarasz said. "There was so much more glass in people's lives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries than there is today."

Marks said she sees the conference theme of "Transformational Matter" as symbolic of the region, which has shifted from its industrial base to focus on technology and other areas, including arts and culture. And she hopes that some of the people who visit might decide to stay.

"We really want to use this year as a platform to encourage other artists to move to Pittsburgh," she said.

---

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens: http://www.phipps.conservatory.org/

Carnegie Museum of Art: http://www.cmoa.org/

Pittsburgh Glass Center: http://www.pittsburghglasscenter.org/

Senator John Heinz Regional History Center: http://www.pghhistory.org/