The Gallery recently celebrated the release of American Glass: The Collections at Yale with a lecture by author John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts. American Glass brings together objects from across the University to explore the vital role that glass has played in the nation’s art and culture. This translucent purple glass pocket bottle, featured on the cover of the publication, was possibly made at Henry William Stiegel’s American Flint Glass Manufactory. Stiegel was one of the first names associated with American glass when antiquing became popular in the late nineteenth century. Pocket bottles such as this were designed for holding small amounts of liquor. The bottles were blown into a mold that impressed a pattern on their surface and were then finished by hand. This example has chains of diamonds that expand and contract as they follow the contours of the bottle. Glass is a medium notoriously difficult to capture on the printed page, and the effortless luminosity of the illustrations in American Glass are the result of the painstaking work of a skilled team at the Gallery. The publication showcases 18th-century mold-blown vessels, 19th-century pressed glass, innovative studio work, and luminous stained-glass windows by John La Farge and Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Tiffany Sprague

Director of Publications and Editorial Services

and Jennifer Lu

Editorial and Production Assistant