Tag Archives: stephen koob

Donor Profile: Micki and Jay Doros

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Micki and Jay Doros

Micki and Jay Doros

Fifty years ago, Micki and Jay Doros were vacationing on Cape Cod. With not much else to do, they spent some time casually browsing an antique shop, where they became fascinated with the glass on display. Since that day, they have been avid collectors.

Says Jay, “We were both interested in glass and it was something we could do together. Although our collecting interests have changed over the years, we’ve both remained engaged.”

“During that same vacation, we were reading an antiques magazine and we saw an advertisement for The Corning Museum of Glass Seminar,” says Micki. “We thought we should go. We largely owe Corning for educating us about glass. We purchased a lot of books, and we became good friends with Rakow librarians Norma Jenkins and Virginia Wright. They were a great help to us. The Seminar lectures are wonderful and we always come home having learned something.” The 2012 Annual Seminar on Glass (held annually in October) marks the 49th Corning Museum Seminar the Doroses have attended.

During their first 20 years of collecting, Micki and Jay focused on cut glass. Micki then became interested in art glass. Minna Rosenblatt, an art glass dealer on Madison Avenue, advised them, as did their son, Paul Doros, then curator of glass at the Chrysler Museum of Art. Paul suggested they specialize in one maker, and they chose Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Favrile Kerosene Lamp with Morning Glory Shade and Peacock Feather Base by Louis Comfort Tiffany

Favrile Kerosene Lamp with Morning Glory Shade and Peacock Feather Base, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Corona, NY, about 1895-1905. (Gift of Micki and Jay Doros, 2006.4.287)

One of the Doroses’ Tiffany objects was displayed in the 2009 exhibition Tiffany Treasures: Favrile Glass from Special Collections. “We bought a lamp at auction. How can you let a (Tiffany) Peacock Eye Lamp Base go?” says Micki. “Then, when we redecorated the house, the lamp got broken. It lay in a box for a year, broken, because we couldn’t bear to look at it. We eventually gave it to the Museum, and conservator, Steve Koob, fixed it.” Learn more about the restoration of the lamp base in the article Restoring Tiffany.

Jay and Micki are active supporters of the Museum. Jay is a Museum Fellow, and both are founding members of the Ennion Society. The Ennion Society is an honorary group for donors who make annual gifts to the Museum of $1,200 or more. Donations are used for acquisitions to the Museum’s glass collection, the world’s most important collection of glass, including the finest examples of glassmaking spanning 3,500 years. Members of the Ennion Society play a critical role in ensuring the Museum’s stature as the international leader in the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge about the art, history, science, and technology of glass and glassmaking.

After all these years, the Doros’ interest in glass in only growing. “The Rakow Library has always been our favorite spot at the Museum,” says Jay. “We spend five days at Seminar, and we spend time at the Library doing research. No matter how much you know, you never know enough.”

Checkmate

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It’s not often our curators and preparators get to “play” with our objects, but the team who recently moved Gianni Toso’s Chess Set, a whimsical work that is a favorite with our visitors, got to learn a little bit about chess.

The chess pieces are made in the form of Jewish and Roman Catholic religious figures. A Jewish rabbi and a Roman Catholic bishop (kings) join a group of holy men and women holding Judeo-Christian symbols of faith, including crosses, Torahs, menorahs, and single candles. Each chess piece has the appropriate costume, hairstyle, and accessory of its rank. Learn more about this object.

The artist does not dictate where the pieces should be placed on the chess board, so the team chose to set it up to show the Fool’s Mate, also known as the Two-Move Checkmate. This is the quickest possible checkmate in chess. See how it worksImageImage.

Restoration of Prunted Beaker (Part Two)

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In the second part of this series, Stephen Koob, the Museum’s conservator, describes the methods used to fill the losses of a prunted beaker on display in Medieval Glass for Popes, Princes, and Peasants. 

 

Now that the beaker has been reassembled, Koob uses plasticine to first create a backing for the losses. Plaster of paris is mixed and poured carefully on top of the backing, creating a perfect match for the loss. The plaster “piece” is then removed and a mold made of it using silicone rubber.  Koob uses epoxy resin to create a cast of the actual fill piece. Acrylic adhesive is used to put the fill piece in place and, with a little clean-up, the result is a fully restored, structurally stable piece.

Restoring a Glass Liberty Bell

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Stephen Koob, the Museum's conservator, demonstrates where the missing piece would be adhered.

 

 Glassmaking was one of the first industries to develop in America, with the first glasshouse built in the colony of Jamestown in 1608. This weekend, we celebrated 234 years as an independent nation, so it’s timely that a team of Museum staff installed in the galleries a large, American cut glass Liberty Bell that is on long-term loan to the Museum from Dr. Kenneth Braunstein.     

The glass Liberty Bell during reconstruction.

 

Made for display at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, OR, the glass Liberty Bell was cut in Rochester, PA, by the H.C. Fry Glass Company. One of the largest single pieces to have been cut during the Brilliant Period, the bell weighs 32 pounds and measures 18” tall and 20.5” wide, with some of the cuts at least 3/4” deep. The piece depicts crossed American flags and the Great Shield of the United States, with large 24-point hobstars. It was shown at the Fry showroom in New York City for an unknown length of time and was discovered in a storeroom by a worker at the Fry plant when the company was being dissolved. The worker bought the bell and displayed it in his living room until his death. It passed through the hands of several owners, until being bought by Dr. Braunstein.    

The glass Liberty Bell after conservation, now installed in the Museum's American Glass Gallery.

The piece had not had any restoration work done until arriving at the Museum this past spring. You can see some of the phases of restoration work in these photos. The glass Liberty Bell is now on display in the Museum’s American Glass Gallery.    

Prunted Beaker Restoration

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Watch as our conservator, Stephen Koob, restores a 13th/14th-century prunted beaker for our newest exhibition, Medieval Glass for Popes, Princes, and Peasants. Prunts are blobs of glass applied to a glass object as decoration. These prunts may also have a practical application, affording someone a firm grasp on the beaker, in the absence of a handle. 

This piece is on loan from the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, in Switzerland. It is part of a group of objects excavated in the 1920’s and had previously been restored, but was in need of a better, more stable, and more presentable restoration. 

With painstaking care and precision Koob disassembled the beaker (48 pieces in total, 5% missing), cleaned the fragments and began the process of reassembly. He filled the areas of missing pieces with synthetic resin (epoxy). 

All of the conservation work the Museum undertakes is reversible: the adhesives that hold the glass pieces together and the epoxy fills can be removed if the beakers need to be retreated in the future. Sometimes, more pieces are found in excavations, or the epoxy yellows. 

The total restoration time was 20 hours over a period of 2 ½ months and we followed the process along the way in this video. This is part one of a two-part series. Part two will follow Koob as he uses tinted resin to fill the losses for this piece.

Conservation Lab Renovations

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What excites a glass conservator even more than a new puzzle to put together? How about a brand new room, with lots more space to put the puzzles on!

The Museum’s conservator, Stephen Koob, extolled the virtues of the newly renovated conservation lab at the Museum, which officially opened on February 5. “It is almost twice the size as the previous lab and it offers the conservation department much more visibility within the Museum, so we can host groups, teach conservators in training, and have more rooms for interns to get hands-on experience.” 

As artists working in glass continue to stretch the limits of the material, creating pieces in larger scale, using adhesives, and combining different types of glass, the Museum’s need for expanded conservation facilities has increased. The new work room’s size and configuration allows the team to rearrange tables within the space to accommodate larger and differently shaped pieces of glass. In addition to the expanded space, the room also offers more appropriate lighting, with large windows that let in a great deal of northern light, the best type for artistic reconstruction. 

“Our goal is to leave the collection in better shape than we found it…not just for this generation, but for generations to come,” says Stephen. “This new work space will help us with that goal.”