Rakow Grant for Glass Research
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The Corning Museum of Glass sponsors the Rakow Grant for Glass Research, which makes available one or more annual awards totaling up to $10,000. The program is made possible through the generosity of the late Dr. and Mrs. Leonard S. Rakow, who were Fellows, friends, and benefactors of the Museum. The purpose of this grant is to foster scholarly research in the history of glass and glassmaking.
Eligibility
Individuals and institutions may apply. There are no national residency requirements, and the results of the research may be reported in any language, but preference may be given to projects which will bring researchers to Corning to study the Museum's collections or to use its Library. Preference will be given to projects which will be completed with the funding available, rather than to projects which will only be advanced by this grant. Projects which are a portion of a larger program, and which are already being funded by others, are unlikely to receive the award.
To summarize: The judges are looking for a project which will lead to a finished product within the funding limits and whose research will bring the recipient to Corning.
Description
Grants may be used to cover travel, living expenses, or other expenditures necessary to conduct the research or to publish it. Awards will be based on the merit of the projects proposed, the nature and extent of the contributions to glass studies, and an evaluation of the ability of the applicant to accomplish the goals as stated. Applications will be considered only if typed in English on the prescribed form, which is also available by clicking the link below.
How to Apply
Applications, which are reviewed by a Museum staff committee, must be received before February 1 of the year for which funding is requested. Notification of the committee's decision will be sent by April 1. Successful applicants will normally receive all of the approved funds at the beginning of the project. In the event that full funding of a project cannot be given, the applicant will be contacted immediately to determine if the project can be modified.
Applicants must certify that they will expend any funds granted in accordance with the project outlines, and that the Museum will be informed of any other grants that are awarded in support of this project. Any major changes in plans made after the awarding of a grant require the prior written consent of the Museum. A brief written report documenting the results of the project is required for publication in the Journal of Glass Studies. A summary of how the grant funds were expended is also required. Unspent funds must be returned to the Museum.
Past Grant Recipients
2012
Margherita Ferri of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice was awarded a 2012 Rakow Grant for Glass Research. Dr. Ferri’s research begins with the glass unearthed at Stari Bar, a key site in Montenegro, by a team of archaeologists from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. These finds will be compared...
Yi-Xian Lin, a Newton International Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology of University College London, was awarded a 2012 Rakow Grant for Glass Research. Dr. Lin is completing a postdoctoral research project on the earliest pigments (Chinese Blue and Purple) and mixed-alkaline glassy faience...
2011
Laure Dussubieux, manager of the LA-ICP-MS Laboratory at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, is studying glass beads made and used in Europe in the post-medieval period. Her investigation will focus on beads in southwestern France from the 16th to 18th centuries.
Diane C. Wright, adjunct professor at Parsons The New School for Design and the Rhode Island School of Design, is the guest curator at the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) in New York City for a 2012 exhibition which will present the work of the stained glass designer Frederick Wilson (1858–1932),...
Virginia C. Young, a doctoral candidate at West Virginia University in Morgantown, is conducting research on working-class feminism in West Virginia’s glass and pottery industries between about 1930 and 1975. She will study 94 boxes of archival materials of the National Association of Manufacturers...
2010
Dr. Jerzy J. Kunicki-Goldfinger, who took a materials science approach to his subject, intended to publish a book based on his research. It was to offer “a comprehensive introduction to the technological and compositional development of vessel glass in central Europe…It will outline the basic types...
A professor of 19th-century art at Ghent University, Dr. Marjan Sterckx received a grant to assist her research on the designs of Belgian sculptor Yvonne Serruys (1873–1953). Between about 1905 and 1910, Serruys designed models for more than 300 objects to be made in pâte de verre and blown glass...
2009
Dr. Stéphanie Boulogne, who received her Ph.D. in Islamic art and archaeology from the Université Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV), is a research fellow at the Laboratoire d’Archéologie Médiévale in Aix-en-Provence, France, and the Institut Français d’Archéologie du Proche-Orient (IFPO) in Amman,...
G. Eason Eige, who retired as curator at the Andrews Pueblo Pottery & Art Gallery in Albuquerque, received this grant “to unravel the confusion and prejudice surrounding glass produced in Mexico by producing a well-researched and richly illustrated book” that includes more than 1,500...
2008
The Berkshire Glassworks, the subject of Lance Kasparian’s research, specialized in the manufacture of handmade plate and cylinder glass for church windows. He used his Rakow Research Grant to study the firm’s organization and development, its use of local materials, the presence of skilled...
Frances Liardet, who holds degrees from Oxford and Bristol Universities, began her exploration of craft practices by examining skill traditions in ancient boatbuilding. She describes her work as “an experimental project involving the reproduction of Mediterranean Group I core-formed alabastra. It...
Susan Rossi-Wilcox, an independent scholar, used her Rakow Research Grant to build on her previous research on the Glass Flowers by reading correspondence and associated documents dating from the beginning of the collection in 1886 to the last accessions in 1936. “Although we tend to think...
2007
Rosa Barovier Mentasti received a 2007 Rakow Research Grant along with Marco Verità and Cristina Tonini, to study Venetian enameled glass of the late 15th and 16th centuries. The three Italian researchers intended to make an iconographic and typological analysis of a wide variety of...
Dr. Cristina Tonini received a 2007 Rakow Research Grant along with Rosa Barovier Mentasti and Marco Verità, to study Venetian enameled glass of the late 15th and 16th centuries. The three Italian researchers intended to make an iconographic and typological analysis of a wide variety of...
Dr. Valentina Varl is curator at the Pokrajinski Muzej Maribor in Slovenia. In researching glass production in the Pohorje region, she says she wanted to “introduce our pressed glass to the public, show its importance, and discover [its] influences.” Since completing her graduate studies in art...
Dr. Marco Verità received a 2007 Rakow Research Grant along with Rosa Barovier Mentasti and Cristina Tonini, to study Venetian enameled glass of the late 15th and 16th centuries. The three Italian researchers intended to make an iconographic and typological analysis of a wide variety of...
2006
Sarah Jennings received a Rakow Grant for the editing and layout of her book, Vessel Glass from Beirut. This volume reported on an extensive collection of glass vessel fragments, dating from 300 B.C. to 1500 A.D., and recovered from three sites. The printing of the volume were supported by a grant...
Deborah Truitt received a Rakow Grant to support her compilation of an index of business records (including accounting, suppliers, customers, and catalogs) of American hollow glass importers between 1700 and 1940. In compiling her database, Truitt searched online catalogs, conduct telephone...
2005
Nina Gray and Lindsy Parrott of The Neustadt Museum of Tiffany Art in New York City investigated the origin and variety of glass that Tiffany Studios used in leaded glass windows, lamps, and mosaics. Their study was based on the Neustadt Museum’s glass collection, which came from Tiffany Studios...
Dr. Alok Kumar Kanungo, a postdoctoral fellow at Deccan College in Pune, India, focused on the antiquity of glass in India, based on archaeological, ethnographic, and archival studies. Dr. Kanungo, who recently published his dissertation, Glass Beads in Ancient India: An Ethnoarchaeological...
Ruth D. Nelson, a graduate student in art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, conducted research on the interior of the Marquette Building, which she describes as “one of the most stunning attractions in Chicago.” It was built in 1894, and the mosaic mural in the lobby’s rotunda is...
Nina Gray and Lindsy Parrott of The Neustadt Museum of Tiffany Art in New York City investigated the origin and variety of glass that Tiffany Studios used in leaded glass windows, lamps, and mosaics. Their study was based on the Neustadt Museum’s glass collection, which came from Tiffany Studios...
2004
Olive Jones, a material culture researcher from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, was the recipient of the 2004 grant. Her research employed the records of bottle merchants, as well as those of wholesalers, exporters, and importers of bottled products, to offer a new interpretation of the vocabulary of the...
2003
Norman H. Tennent, a Scottish scholar and professor of chemistry of conservation and restoration at the University of Amsterdam, studied old restoration methods to repair vessel glass. Dr. Tennent surveyed the historical development of glass repair materials and to record the long-term behavior of...
Francesca Tolaini, a Ph.D. candidate at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, conducted research for her dissertation on the book that contains recipes on glassmaking and glass coloring from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Tolaini has transcribed and analyzed recipes in various...
2002
Ruth Eve Jackson-Tal, a researcher in the Glass Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority, examined new evidence from many excavations in Syro-Palestine and re-evaluate the role of the region as a glass production center during the late Hellenistic period. Jackson-Tal received her M.A. in...
Pavlos Triantafyllidis, an archaeologist in the Greek Ministry of Culture in Rhodes, researched glass technology at the Hellenistic glass factory in Rhodes. Dr. Triantafyllidis received his Ph.D. from the University of Ioannina in 1998. His dissertation focused on glass objects from Minoa on...
2001
John D. Banham researched the development of glassmaking in northeastern England. Mr. Banham, who lives in County Durham, has 30 years of experience in the social, economic, and environmental development of northeastern England. Most of that experience was acquired in local government work in...
R. H. Pinder-Wilson studied an important collection of Islamic glass fragments in Cairo, Egypt. Mr. Pinder-Wilson, a resident of London, retired as regents’ professor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. He also served as director of the British Institute of Afghan Studies in...
2000
Francesca Dell’Acqua, a graduate student at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, prepared her doctoral dissertation on glazed windows in Europe in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The starting point for this research was a study of the ninth- and 12th-century window glass found...
Dr. Jill Turnbull received her doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1999. The Rakow Grant supported the publication of her dissertation, “The Scottish Glass Industry, 1610–1750,” in the Monograph Series of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Most of the material in Dr....
1999
Dr. Karen L. Kettering, associate curator of Russian art at the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C., worked on a survey of major developments in Russian glass production from the 18th to early 20th centuries, based on objects in the Hillwood collection. Dr. Kettering, who received her Ph.D....
Patricia C. Pongracz, at the time a graduate student at Brown University, studied the glass excavated at the Augustinian abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, Soissons, France (founded 1076). The study of glass from the monastic site of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes was based on excavations of the Wesleyan-...
1998
Dr. Thilo Rehren, research scientist at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum in Bochum, Germany, was awarded the 1998 Rakow Grant for Glass Research for a study of Late Bronze Age (LBA) glassmaking. “The stunning homogeneity of LBA base glass chemistry from Egypt and beyond is a long-known fact,” Dr....
1997
The 1997 Rakow Grant for Glass Research was awarded to Kenneth M. Wilson for the completion of a definitive study of the Mount Washington Glass Works. Mr. Wilson, an author, lecturer, consultant, and glass jewelry maker from Punta Gorda, Florida, has written several books and many articles about...
1996
The 1996 Rakow Grant for Glass Research was awarded to Sarah Jennings, archaeologist with the Central Archaeological Service of English Heritage, for the preparation of a report on glass found during excavations in Beirut, Lebanon. Before joining English Heritage, she held the position of...
1995
Henri Reiling, honorary curatorial assistant for the zoological collections of the Utrecht University Museum in the Netherlands, studied the 19th-century glass models of invertebrate animals made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. He holds degrees in biology and education from the University...
1994
W. Patrick McCray, a doctoral candidate majoring in materials science and engineering at the University of Arizona, studied the culture and technology of glassmaking in Renaissance Venice. Mr. McCray received his M.S. and B.S. in materials science and engineering from the University of...
Dr. Susan Young, an archaeologist and art historian, catalogued and studied glass from the excavation of the medieval castle of Saranda Kolones (about 1196–1222) in Paphos, Cyprus. Director of the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens, she received degrees from Pennsylvania State University...
1993
The 1993 Rakow Grant for Glass Research was awarded to Regina Lee Blaszczyk, a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware in Newark. The grant was used to complete the final stage of research for Ms. Blaszczyk’s dissertation, “Imagining Consumers: Manufacturers and Markets in Ceramics and...
1992
The 1992 Rakow Grant for Glass Research was awarded to Geneviève Sennequier, curator at the Musée des Antiquités in Rouen, France. The grant was used to complete a doctoral dissertation on the Gallo-Roman glass of the Normandy region of France. Ms. Sennequier’s research was based on approximately...
1991
The Rakow Grant for Glass Research was awarded to Jørgen Hein, curator of the Royal Danish Collections at Rosenborg Palace, Copenhagen, Denmark for use in completing a catalog of about 250 unpublished glass objects at Rosenborg Palace and Amalienborg Palace. Sixty percent of these objects...
1990
The 1990 Rakow Grant for Glass Research was awarded to Dr. Virginia Chieffo Raguin, an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The grant was used in completing The Stained Glass Heritage of America, 1800–1980s, a book com...
1989
Dr. Julian Henderson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Oxford University Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, was awarded funds from the Rakow Grant for Glass Research to study and chemically analyze glass fragments from two important Bronze Age and early Iron Age sites...
Professor David Jacoby, a scholar of medieval history and member of the Department of History at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. His research topic was the development of the Venetian glass industry between...
1988
Dr. Meredith Lillich, professor at Syracuse University, completed studies for a publication on European stained glass (made before 1700) in upstate New York public collections. Among these works were panels in the collection of The Corning Museum of Glass (including panels on permanent loan from...
Martine Newby of London completed a report on the glass finds from the medieval Benedictine monastery of Farfa, near Rome. During the early Middle Ages, Farfa was under the patronage of the Holy Roman emperors, and it became one of the richest and most powerful monasteries in Europe. During seven...
Wang Shixiong of the Shaanxi Provincial Museum, Xian, China studied glass beads excavated in tombs dating from about 1000 B.C. (the Western Zhou dynasty) in Fufeng County and Baoji. These beads were among the earliest examples of glass or glass-related materials found in China. The research aimed...
1987
Miriam E. Mucha, special assistant in the American Art Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, received the 1987 Rakow Grant for Glass Research, awarded by The Corning Museum of Glass. Mrs. Mucha's project concerned the method of manufacture of French pressed tablewares produced between 1825...
1986
Jorge Barrera, a French glass scholar, was selected as the first recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research. Mr. Barrera studied the glass discovered in the Cour Napoleon, the courtyard of the Louvre in Paris, during excavations for the new entrance and expanded public service area for...