Steuben Glass Company

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Moby Dick, Steuben crystal sculpture designed by Donald Pollard and Sidney Waugh, first piece made in 1959. Length 28.6 cm.

Courtesy of Steuben Glass

Steuben Glass Company, glassworks founded in 1903 by T.G. Hawkes and Frederick Carder at Corning, New York. It was purchased by the Corning Glass Works in 1918 but continued to be directed by Carder until 1933. The company became known for fancy coloured glassware, particularly a type with an iridescent, translucent finish called Aurene. Another specialty was Intarsia glass, crystal glassware with soft, overlapping colour inlays. In the 1930s the firm began making glassware from a new colourless lead crystal developed by Corning. Steuben later manufactured fine glass products of cut, engraved, and free-blown designs made almost exclusively of that type of crystal glass. In 2008 Schottenstein Stores Corp. bought the company and sought to increase waning sales. However, Steuben continued to struggle financially, and in September 2011 Schottenstein announced that it was closing the glassworks. Steuben’s only factory shut down in November of that year.