by Deborah Desilets
For ten years the Anton Refregier Mosaics of the Explorers of the Americas have been in storage. As the one who arranged their gifting to Tallahassee, I have gone to great lengths contemplating this state of affairs. Why have these beautiful mosaics languished for lack of support for restoration in our community? What is that to say for our community in the arts? Waxing philosophical, I re-read The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. This book written in 1936, not published until 1943, garnered in 1946 the Nobel Peace Prize in literature for Hesse. Art things take time. As it goes, the book explores an individual’s quest for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spirituality—so be a community’s search for its own values. It was a touchstone—or a looking glass—into my own values: what am I doing caring so much for these mosaics—these tesserae of glass? After all these magical musings rereading Hesse’s glass bead game, it is easy to understand how I wound up in Corning, New York at the corning Glass Museum. I have had a long love affair with glass.
The Corning Museum that proves that although fragile, glass is durable—there are 3500 years of glass objects. That these glass pieces of all size, manner, style, and use coexist in their myriad forms is the most amazing gift of this museum. Glass is versatile! From the first glass formed in the earth by lightning bolts to the discovery of fiberoptics that transmit the words I type now to press, to the telescopes into other universes, to the Fresnel lenses of lighthouses, to headlights and window shields, to test-tubes and injected beneath the skin sensors, all here in the world of glass. Glass from silica and fire; beholden to fire and earth—amazing! All forms from are the same substance. So, so many applications. I observed as the glass vase demonstration proceeded that, “Glass balls up in a bead in the heat of a fire…” and then, I watched as the glass bead game of change began. Thirty minutes later a glass vase appeared. Voila! Now so prepared with an understanding of its’ variable makings, I devoured the hallways full of glass.
Glass is our most important material. From 3000 BC in Mesopotamia, the north coast of Syria or Egypt, glass as an independent object dates back to 2500 BC. Vessels of glass appear in 1450 BC, in the court of Thutmose III, Pharoah of 18th Dynasty Egypt. Yet it is the Phoenicians sailors who are attributed 4,000 years ago with the making of glass. No wonder St. Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and glassmakers. They learned that small pieces of crushed quartz and ash from plants when heated above 750 degrees would make a crude bead of glass. This heated mixture makes a ball; and from this bead of glass all our history has been informed.
Glass is the history of humankind and our evolution into modern life. Glass allowed literacy: in lenses to read to lenses to peer into the universe. Without glass the world as we know it would not be recognizable. A bead of glass “this material born pf earth and fire—frozen in atomic purgatory—has facilitated men from ancient to modern times.” Without it so many things could not be seen. Today, “Gorilla Glass” was invented at Corning for Steve Jobs to be the face of his iPhones. In earlier times, it was in Venice of the 1400’s where “cristillo” was forged. This the clearest glass for lenses by 1608 was transformed into telescopes in the Netherlands. Within a few years, Galileo Galilei would improve on the design allowing him to see for the first time the moons of Jupiter. His insights into the heavens showed the sun as the center of the universe. This apparent truth changed the geocentric view of the world held since the Greeks. And the Modern age began.
When Desoto began his explorations into LaFlorida he brought with him glass beads to barter with the aboriginals. His Glass Beads lost in the sand helped identify his steps; the glass beads—preserved as they were marked time. So, now I really get why the mosaics interest me: glass, the ubiquitous material of modernity tells the story of the explorations. These Mosaics mean a lot to me materially, not just as an art piece: Glass is the material of discovery. So, I hope you to pass this love along and hope you will discover when you look at glass the power of the material itself: a material forged of earth and fire; so authentic, so beautiful, and so transformative.
Glass will be in our future; it tells the story of how we see, what we see, and transmits our feelings in emojis in modern times. The glass bead game is about transformation and discovery; and it is interesting that the glass mosaics represent the explorers—the material that made their quests for the new possible.
Google the Corning Glass Museum for the full show! And for more information about the Anton Refregier Explorer Mosaics please write to me at [email protected].