For more than 300 years, itinerant glassworkers traveled from town to town entertaining audiences with their artistic, scientific, and technological skills. Their shows would often involve a lampworking demonstration and a display of glasswork made to impress customers, like models of famous ships or landmarks, fountains, and Cartesian divers. Later glassworkers and troupes of performers traveled with hydraulic skeletons and working glass steam engines. Glassworkers also traveled with circuses and had long-term engagements at museums, amusement parks, and World's Fairs. Many of their performances were advertised through handbills, posters, and newspapers.

The Rakow Library’s collection of itinerant glassworker materials spans four centuries of glassmaking demonstrations and displays around the world, and includes handbills, broadsides, photographs, newspaper advertisements, and more. These materials will be digitized to provide researchers and historians with information on featured glassworkers and troupes within the larger context of traveling entertainers.

Projected Outcomes

(completed)

• Itinerant Glassworkers digital collection
• Itinerant Glassworkers research guide