Goode Glass FINAL (6-26-23) - Flipbook - Page 13
employees and business visitors to its headquarters and its various branches. David Goode served
as a founding member on this new art committee. Armed with corporate financial backing,
committee members were able to expand and strengthen their art market networks nationally
and internationally to acquire suitable works for the effort. The parameters for the committee’s
focus were set to encompass art created during the age of the American railroads from about 1800
to the present, giving preference to themes loosely related to the business of railroads and the
sceneries they traversed.1 However, as the collection diversified and grew over time, a decision
was made not to include any works in glass due to concerns posed by the fragility of the material.
The relocation to Norfolk introduced the Goodes to the Chrysler Museum of Art, an institution
that exposed them to the historic breadth of glass as a medium for artistic endeavor. This museum
owned one of the most important and comprehensive glass collections in the United States,
ranging in date from antiquity to contemporary glass sculpture. A particular collection focus
was on American and European art glass due to the personal interests of the museum’s major
donor, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. (1909-1988), who gifted his collection to the institution in 1971 and
continued to manage and add to it until his death. The virtuosity of British cameo glass, executed
to perfection by the venerable British glass manufacturers Thomas Webb & Sons and Stevens &
Thomas Webb
& Sons (British,
Stourbridge,
1842-1990),
Swan Head
Scent Flask,
mold-blown,
translucent
red encased in
opaque white
glass, cameocarved; hinged
and engraved
silver closure
Williams, especially caught Susan
Goode's attention. An extremely
labor-intensive technique of ancient
origin, cameo glass was rediscovered
in the late 19th century by British
glassmaker John Northwood (18361902). Rather than carving by hand
through the contrasting glass layers
of blown vessels, the elaborate
decorations were now achieved by a combination of wheel-engraving and acid-etching. Skilled
craftsmen masterfully manipulated light playing off the opaque and translucent glass layers
revealed to provide visual depth in relief, creating luxury vessels for the fashionable home. Queen
Victoria, leader of a contemporary craze for all types of cameos, was enamored with this new
British cameo glass and frequently relied on it for personal gifts. The Swan Head Scent Flask in the
Goode collection, from about 1885, aptly represents a motif that Victorian contemporaries would
have recognized as referencing imperial identity: all swans in England and Wales were (and still
are) the prerogative of the British monarch.
1
Examples are Charles Burchfield’s Viaduct in Sunlight; Edward Hopper’s Railroad Crossing; John Marin’s Coal Country; and
Griffith (Grif) Teller’s Pennsylvania Railroad.
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