CLEAR AS A BELL, AS LUMINOUS AS THE STARS, AS TRANSFIXING AS OCEAN WAVES AND AS REVEALING AS A CAMERA LENS. GLASS IS BOTH FRAGILE AND ENDURING, A SHIELD-LIKE LAYER OF PERSPECTIVE BETWEEN OUR EYES AND OUR VISION.
SWIRLED GLASS ON DISPLAY KELVINGROVE ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM — GLASGOW, SCOTLAND TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2022 4:43PM
THE CARNIVOROUS ROOM KIBBLE PALACE — GLASGOW, SCOTLAND THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 2022 3:05PM
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YVES FLUSHMOUNT POLISHED BRASS UNLACQUERED FINISH WITH POT WHITE GLASS INTERIORS BY MARY BETH WAGNER, ARCHITECTURE BY SHM ARCHITECTS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHAN SCHRODER
CAMPION BRONZE FINISH ANTIQUE BRASS ACCENTS INTERIORS BY RAMSEY LYONS DESIGN PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICOLE FRANZEN
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JENNIFER WALL ANTIQUE BRASS FINISH INTERIORS BY SUMMER WILLIAMS DESIGN, KITCHEN DESIGN BY MARTIN MOORE DESIGN ARCHITECTURE BY ICON ARCHITECTS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK BOLTON
CHELSEA FARROW & BALL NO. 31 RAILINGS PAINTED FINISH HEIRLOOM ACCENTS CLEAR INTERIORSGLASSBY STUDIO SEIDERS BUILD BY MICHAEL DEANE HOMES ARCHITECTURE BY RYAN STREET ARCHITECTS PHOTOGRAPHY BY DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND STAKINGPANE
Welcome to Kibble Palace, an otherworldly ode to all that glimmers and grows.
Daffodils bring a bit of welcomed color to an early spring day at the Glasgow Botanic Gardens.
Pretty it surely is as one enters the 19th-century gates of the Botanic Gardens. The dingy sky brings color into bolder focus and creates a contrast that brings the scale of the surroundings into sharper relief. More daffodils flaunt their neon, interspersed with purple-blue iris. An emerald lawn encircles a Chilean Monkey Puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana)—its sculptural whimsy like something out of Dr. Seuss—all crowned by a sprawling bank of yellow tulips, as good a sign as any that winter is officially in the rearview.
Its centerpiece dome dazzles like a zinnia’s many-petaled blossom in stark black and white. Here the fragile and the fecund interface, inanimate glass and graceful unfurling fronds coalesce. Beneath thousands upon thousands of humidity-frosted panes, light refracts into something newly alive. The glasshouse casts a spell, if you will, one that makes it a beloved Scottish landmark, and one that enchanted Ewen Donaldson, the longtime manager of the Botanic Gardens, decades ago and has shaped his life’s trajectory ever since.
he Glasgow sky is moody and gray—exactly as you’d expect. (“Glas” means grey-green in Brittonic; those Scots tell it like it is.) It’s early spring, and daffodils are starting to pop up out of the still cold ground, doing their best to cheer up this drizzly city, to shake off winter’s gloom. Here in Scotland’s largest metropolis, Glaswegians are famously friendly, and in the chilly dampness their warmth is welcome. As we wander past the West End’s elegant townhouses, in the shadow of the University of Glasgow’s 15th-century towers, one gent offers an unsolicited tip, pointing us toward a more scenic shortcut to our destination, the Glasgow Botanic Gardens.
Even amidst the spectacle of the new season, the Botanic Gardens’ pièce de résistance is neither flora nor fauna but Kibble Palace, a glasshouse heralded as one of the United Kingdom’s architectural and engineering wonders. The palace is constructed solely of glass and iron, giving it the appearance of an immense lantern hovering over the eastern quadrant of the gardens. It, too, was planted here, with roots recounting a curious history. But after a century and a half, as the Botanic Gardens have endured varying seasons of bloom and decay, growth and dormancy, Mr. Kibble’s glasshouse remains a breathtaking specimen of Victorian ingenuity, now housing towering ferns and plant specimens from around the globe.
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VICTORIAN DETAILING ON THE GLASSHOUSE SUPPORTS.
“Off to Kibble Palace are ya? Take this high road through the park. It’s prettier,” he says, his jaunty accent as thick as Scotland’s renowned peat.
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started working here at age 23, and in 2021 retired at 66—that’s 43 years. That’s a lifetime, really,” says Ewen, the inflection of his words lilting up, smile like, his accent casting its own delightful spell. “I was brought up in a wee village about 10 miles north of Glasgow. A farm village, so I was used to country ways,” he explains. “I hated school, but then I discovered plants and gardening, and I went from hating school to loving it.”
state-of-the-art engineering for that time. Beneath the soaring 150-foot-diameter dome, a pond encircled a 14-footwide sunken “chamber” or orchestra pit. “We discovered the drain while we were doing restoration,” says Ewen of the long-buried feature. “We called a technician in, and unbelievably, he got it working in 10 minutes.”
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When he turned 15, Ewen’s mother showed him how to nav igate the bus route from his rural village so he could begin an apprenticeship as a gardener in Glasgow’s parks. “My mum insisted that I get proper training,” says Ewen. He first worked in the Botanic Gardens during his third and fourth year of instruction (1972–74) before continuing horticultural studies at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Ewen re turned to Glasgow Botanic Gardens as a junior manager in 1978 when he first became responsible for the glasshouses, including the Kibble Palace. “In 1992 I became the boss” says Ewen. He and his wife, Fiona, and their two children lived on the grounds in the ‘West Lodge’ gatehouse, just yards away from the Kibble Palace. “We raised our family here. It was magical. At night my son and daughter had run of the place, riding their bikes all around. But I wouldn’t let them climb the trees” he recalls, “They weren’t happy about that.”
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What is known is that unlike most glasshouses built for horticultural purposes, Kibble built his as a showpiece at his home at Coulport on Loch Long, intended for use as a con servatory, or “pleasure palace” to host concerts, promenades and art shows. Kibble’s curvilinear glasshouse, with slender iron glazing bars and arched domes supported internally on cast-iron columns, was unique in the 19th century, and
Ewen’s deeply personal connection to Kibble Palace is fitting, as the glasshouse, built in the late 1860s, was a personal pas sion for its creator and namesake, John Kibble. A Victorian eccentric, dabbler, engineer and amateur photographer, Kibble is known for inventing a quirky floating bicycle that he reputedly pedaled across Loch Long, as well as the largest camera ever made. With a 13"-diameter lens and 44-pound plates, it was mounted on wheels and drawn by a horse. Perhaps his fascination with photographic glass plates led to Kibble’s interest in glasshouses, but “that’s speculation. We really don’t know that much about him,” Ewen says.
“ We raised our family here. It was magical— at night my son and daughter had run of the place, riding their bikes all around. But I wouldn’t let them climb trees,” he recalls. weren’t“Theyhappy about that.”
Ewen Donaldson, Gardens Manager for forty-three years.
Raised beds, housing an array of flora, hug the perimeter of humidity-frosted glass walls.
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) REFLECTIVE PANELS
ENCIRCLE THE DOME AT THE PALACE'S MAIN ENTRY. EXOTIC SPECIES IN THE CARNIVOROUS ROOM. BEHIND THE PALACE GLASS. A DEPICTION OF EVE IN MARBLE BY THE ROMAN SCULPTOR, SCIPIONE TADOLINI.
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“This was a business enterprise for Kibble,” explains Ewen. “But unfortunately he proved difficult to deal with. And it didn’t help that acoustics in a glasshouse were, as you might imagine, problematic. There’s an echo in here.” After a falling out with the Royal Botanic Institute, Kibble sold his glasshouse to them in 1875, and the debt incurred by that transaction put the garden’s finances in jeopardy for many years. Ultimately, in 1891, the gardens and Kibble Palace were transferred to the City of Glasgow, “to be kept open, preserved and maintained in all time coming as a public park, botanic gardens and place of recreation, for the use of the inhabitants of the City.”
John Kibble agreed to maintain the structure and its con tents for 21 years, in exchange for a percentage of revenue from all “entertainments” presented there. In addition to bi-weekly concerts and promenades, the palace hosted major events including large flower shows and, notably, the installation of Benjamin Disraeli as Lord Rector of Glasgow University (the Botanic Gardens had been affiliated with the university since their inception in 1706 as the “Physic Garden,” for use in training physicians). In May 1874, Kibble Palace served as the venue for a four-day visit by American evangelists Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, which reportedly drew overflow crowds of more than 7,000 (and necessitated draping the naked statue of Apollo).
THE KIBBLE DOME UNDER A MOODY GLASGOW SPRING SKY.
Similarly, Kibble decided to move his personal palace not long after building it, and following a series of negotiations, he finally struck a deal in 1871 with the Glasgow Royal Bo tanic Institute (as the gardens were then known), in which he agreed to dismantle, move and re-erect his conservatory on the garden grounds. James Boyd and Sons of Paisley, a construction firm that had experience with glasshouses in England, Ireland and South Africa, oversaw the rebuilding of what was then called The Kibble Art Palace. It reopened on May 6, 1873, with a private preview featuring dignitaries and a guest list of 1,500. The following day, the Glasgow Herald reported on “this elegant structure” calling the “main Dome a magnificent circular expanse, flooded with light and by its harmonious arrangement of flowers and tree ferns and statuary, forming an interior of striking beauty….”
hat level of technological sophistication speaks to the innovations of the post Industrial Rev olution era in which Kibble lived. While glass houses for botanical use date to the 1600s, and stone orangeries even back to Roman times, the engineering of plate glass for large-scale use wasn’t feasible until the late 1840s. After Britain’s glass tax was repealed in 1851, glass also became more affordable. Both factors played into the rising popularity of glasshouses in the 19th century, a trend, no doubt, fueled largely by the famed, and immense, Crystal Palace in London. Designed by Joseph Paxton to house the 1851 Great Exposition in Hyde Park, the Crystal Palace covered 18 acres and incorporated 10 million feet of glass. After the exhibition was over, the massive structure was moved to Sydenham Hill in southeast London, where it eventually burned in 1936.
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JAPANESE KOI CARP UNDER THE SMALLER ENTRANCE DOME.
nder municipal management, fees were no longer charged for entrance to the gardens or Kibble Palace, and Mr. Kibble’s magnifi cent glasshouse shifted from being primar ily an open space with a few mosses and ferns, to a space filled with plants, including in 1892, the planting of “the magnificent tree ferns under the centre dome (that) afford a spectacle to be seen in no other city in Britain, if indeed in Europe,” as recorded in the minutes of that year’s Annual General Meeting. These tree ferns from Australia, today comprise an official National Collection of tree fern and remain Kibble Palace’s distinctive feature.
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TREE FERNS ARE THE SHINING STARS, SOME MORE THAN 100 YEARS OLD.
“It’s a joy to watch the kids come in—they love the fish (Koi carp swim about in a pond below the smaller entrance dome), then they walk into the dome and you can see their eyes get big,” he says, pointing to the monstrous ferns and looming Japanese banana trees. “We don’t charge admission and are able to offer free tours to students, that’s unusual for a botanic garden. Creating an environment like this is fan tastic—it’s not too massive, you can’t get lost, but it gives people an opportunity to enjoy some beauty and serenity, to appreciate the natural world.” To expand public exposure to the gardens, Ewen supported the launch of “Bard in the Botanic,” a Shakespeare in the gardens series, among other
“Some date back to 1880,” explains Ewen, who—tall and lanky, distinguished and soft-spoken—seems to resemble them, in the way dog owners often resemble their pets. “Ferns are primitive plants. These are like dinosaurs, really,” he adds. Indeed it’s hard not to be awed, to feel removed to another place and time, as one walks beneath the canopy of uncurl ing, feathery fronds reaching up toward the lacy Victorian ironwork—imagine Jurassic Park meets Downton Abbey
Having tended these ferns and the Botanic Gardens’ other inhabitants, including a prized begonia collection, daily for four decades, Ewen has an intimacy with the plants, a rev erence, but he’s not one to play favorites. He’s just as proud to point out the robust Kahili ginger (Hedychium gardner ianum) planted by Princess Anne when she visited (Ewen also gave Prince Charles a private tour, a career highlight for him), as the funky 300-year old grass tree from Australia, plus a whole wing of carnivorous pitcher plants and Venus fly traps. He equally loves the conifers and alpine plants, and “I’m keen on roses too,” he adds, noting the world rose collection opened by Princess Tomohito of Japan in 2003. For Ewen, it’s all about sharing his passion and knowledge of the plant kingdom, and that kingdom’s historic glass palace.
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There’s also a lot to overseeing a heritage site like the Glasgow Botanic Gardens that includes a Class A historic building—the highest rating possible, which Kibble Palace has been given. Ewen is a gentle, humble man, and the respect his former employees have for him is evident as he walks around the grounds, treated like a celebrity, albeit one sans ego. “Nobody has a bad thing to say about him. He’s a clever man—his life was and is these gardens,” says Alex Reynolds, a horticulturalist who has worked at the Botanic Gardens for the last four years.
programs. On the heels of a global pandemic, and given the challenges of climate change, the need for a green oasis may be greater today than ever, he notes, “but stimulating an interest in and love of the environment and plants has always been our mission.”
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“We fully dismantled it for the first time since 1882. All the iron bars were stripped of paint—28 layers!—and much of it lead, which is why we had to do all of the restoration off-site,” he explains. Ewen and his team raised £7 million ($8.6 million), much of it from the Heritage Lottery Fund, to underwrite the extensive project, which not only entailed moving every plant out of the palace, but painstakingly cataloging the glass and structure into a database, as no plans survive from Mr. Kibble’s day. Before the restoration, the ventilation system was manually operated by turning big iron wheels that now hide, at ground level, in the fern forest. “They rarely worked,” says Ewen, who welcomed the modern electronic upgrade.
But now that most every pane of glass has been replaced (minus one remaining historic row of them), every bit of iron restored or in many cases recast, every magnificent fern replanted, plus hundreds of tons of rock brought in from Northern Scotland and goodness knows how much dirt, the venerable Kibble Palace is once again a breathtak ing work of art, and primed to stand, as a feat of innovation and artistry, an ode to the enduring beauty of glass and the natural wonder of plant life, for another few centuries.
The three-year undertaking gave Ewen a renewed appre ciation for the architecture and engineering behind the glorious glass marvel that is Kibble Palace. “The lantern at the top alone weighs two and a half tons, so somehow the way it was designed, the glass becomes structural as well,” he says. “The city engineers told us that an application for permission to build it today would be denied.”
A WHEEL USED TO OPERATE THE ORIGINAL VENTILATION SYSTEM.
Looking around the luminous dome with its enchanted fern forest, Ewen’s eyes flash a wee twinkle. “You can see why we’re proud,” he says. “If Kibble came back today, I think he’d be amazed to see his glasshouse.”
ow recently retired, Ewen jokes that he has picked up gardening as a hobby, because in reality, during his long tenure as manager of the Botanic Gardens, administrative du ties kept him from getting the dirt under his fingernails that he would have liked. Given that he oversaw the total restoration of Kibble Palace from 2003 to 2006, you can see why.
Tree ferns in the center dome.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) INSIDE THE MAIN RANGE GLASSHOUSES. AN ORCHID FROM THE COLLECTION. ROOM AFTER ROOM OF DIFFERENT BIOSPHERES. AN IRON SPIRAL STAIRCASE, RECENTLY REFURBISHED.
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A sampling of the Botanic Gardens’ National Collection of Begonias.
The main room in the tropical house at the Glasgow Botanic Gardens.
QUAD ARM BELDI BLACK BENJAMINFINISHMOORE #383 MEADOW VIEW SHADES HEWN BRASS LACQUERED INTERIOR INTERIORS BY ASHLEY WHITTAKER DESIGN PHOTOGRAPHY BY THOMAS LOOF
CHILTERN SINGLE BLACK FINISH WITH VINTAGE ACCENTS INTERIORS BY JEFFREY ALAN MARKS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY TREVOR TONDRO / OTTO
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EDDYSTONE ROUND POLISHED NICKEL FINISH BLACK INTERIORSACCENTSBYSIENNA & SAGE INTERIOR DESIGN PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW GIAMMARCO
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HYDE HEIRLOOM FINISH WITH CUSTOM FABRIC SHADE INTERIORS BY WESLEY INTERIORS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY HEIDI HARRIS
DIAMOND VINTAGE POLISHEDFINISHBRASS ACCENTS CLEAR INTERIORSGLASSBY KELLY HOHLA INTERIORS ARCHITECTURE BY STUDIO AM BUILD BY HOXIE HUGGINS PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON LEITZ
The living room mantle is a scrapbook of family history and happy times, including an ostrich feather headdress Sara wore to Allison Sarofim’s legendary Halloween party.
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Cover illustration by Riki Matsuda.
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Sara found the perfect acce S S o rie S for a h e rme S m a rdi Gra S lunch at Ju S t in e at a local antique emporium.
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ARCHITECTURE BY STUDIO AM BUILD BY HOXIE HUGGINS PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON LEITZ
KELLY HOHLA INTERIORS
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i n a c ity where exce S S i S e V e rythin G , dancin G S h oe S , l ike Sara’ S l o uboutin S , are hi G h , colorful and beribboned.
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It is the dining room, then, that has to be readily converted into a ballroom, when enough lubrication has greased the dancing heels. In a stroke of inspired resourcefulness that characterizes her design work, Sara has deployed a ping pong table to serve as the ultimate flexible dining table. In a flash it can be cleared, folded up and rolled away, so the bon temps can indeed rouler. Not quite square but definitely commodious, the table seats four per side comfortably, more when elbows rub.
“Twenty is my preferred count for dinner,” says Sara. “Something about that number feels like more of a party. You’re getting to know people, you’re catching up with people. Everyone comes with an old friend and leaves with a new one.” Which is exactly what happened when she threw a dinner party for six of us from Urban Electric, liberally spicing our group with locals, some long timers like her “sister wife” Vesta, along with other more recent transplants, including decorator Lorraine Kirke, restaurateurs Sean Josephs and Mani Dawes, and stylist/producer Trei Chambers.
HENRY HOWARD, NOTABLE ARCHITECT OF SUCH LOUISIANA LANDMARKS AS MADEWOOD AND NOTTOWAY PLANTATIONS, ALSO DESIGNED DOZENS OF GRAND HOUSES IN NEW ORLEANS’ GARDEN DISTRICT. SARA RUFFIN COSTELLO, DECORATOR, STYLIST, WRITER AND FORMER CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF DOMINO MAGAZINE, WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO LAND ONE OF THEM MORE THAN 10 YEARS AGO.
You could park a semi in Sara Costello’s living room. With windows reaching from floor to 14-foot ceiling, a fireplace flanked by doors that open out to the pool and a piano tucked in one corner, it is a party palace-in-waiting. But rolling up the gigantic jute rug to clear the floor for dancing poses a problem. “When it was delivered all bound up, the rug barely fit through the double front doors,” says Sara.” It was a pig in a python situation, altogether unwieldy.” So once it went down, it stayed down.
DIAMOND VINTAGE POLISHEDFINISHBRASS ACCENTS CLEAR INTERIORSGLASSBY KELLY HOHLA INTERIORS ARCHITECTURE BY STUDIO AM BUILD BY HOXIE HUGGINS PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON LEITZ
q u een of the b on tem p S
SARA RUFFIN COSTELLO NEW ORLEANS
The bags of space, indoors and out, changed how she approached everything, not least entertaining. More room begets more merrymaking, more indulging, more dancing and music, more mashup and cross-connecting of all sorts. In other words, more of all the things that make her adopted city so singular and riotously engaging.
There is always room in the generous front hall for a spillover table.
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“There’s a buildup during Carnival to the crescendo that is Mardi Gras,” says Sara.” It’s electric, it’s like a galactic storm.” The tom-tom of drumming echoes through neighborhoods for weeks as the bands practice parading. Everyone participates, dresses up, cuts loose, imbibes. Back before she lived there, Sara’s fantasy of New Orleans was of walking into a grand house and having a civilized drink. Aside from the joy of doing that in her own home, she can now steer
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Such a tasty melange of flavors extends to more than just the guest list and menus. A dinner party chez Costello blends green Moroccan tumblers with cut crystal goblets, French fauteuil with folding chairs, humble bowls with Mottahedeh dinner plates (in her wedding pattern, Imperial Blue). But never paper napkins. A certain amount of decorum was bred into this Richmond, Virginia, native. “There’s nothing like pulling out the silver, pressing the napkins,” says the woman whose happy place is the laundry room. “There’s a lot of effort, for sure, but stagecraft is as important as what’s on the plate.” Especially in New Orleans. Especially during Mardi Gras.
abo V e from left : i n S t ructed to wear “ S u btle” co S t ume S t r ei c h amber S , a ccompanied by m i S S y h u l S e y in a new tiara of pompom flower S , a nd n a i S h w i lliam S , m ore than deli V e red.
Sara’s flavorful approach to guest lists echoes that of entertainer extraordinaire Julia Reed, a friend and neighbor with whom she had the luck to spend time before Reed’s premature passing in 2020. “Julia was the lighthouse. Nobody was as tough, as funny, as smart, as elegant. She served the best food you’ve ever tasted in your life and she usually made it herself. And when I would ask her who was coming to dinner, she’d say, in her Mississippi drawl, ‘I have no ide-ah who’s gonna be here tonight. I just called everyone I know.’”
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In Robert LeBlanc, a native Louisianan and local restaurateur who added hotelier to his resume with The Chloe, Sara met her match. “His MO is, you know, open the doors, let us entertain you,” she says. “This wonderful spacious house gives us the flow for entertaining as you would at home, which I love so much.” She and LeBlanc imbued The Chloe with an idiosyncratic, soulful voice–exactly what she seeks in hotels she visits. There’s a bright sunroom and a moody bar, an alligator woven into the stair runner and egrets crisscrossing the walls of a high-ceilinged salon.
o p po S ite, clockwi S e f rom upper left: Sara mixe S blue and white china with ru S t ic G r een G la S S w are from m o rocco ; l o w V a S e S of S p rin G flower S bri G h ten the table with color and S c ent ; d ra matic floral decoration S a re ea S y : Sara J u S t G o e S to the G a rden and G a ther S b ranche S of fan palm S and ma G nolia.
locals and out-of-towners alike to The Chloe, a 14-room hotel housed in an Uptown mansion, decorated to the eclectic nines by Sara herself.
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a b o V e , from left : l a tticework, textile S and art add dimen S ion to a S ittin G room at t h e c h loe ; c r ane S lift off abo V e S a ra S i ttin G beneath urban electric lou l ou S c once S
Out on the high-columned front porch, pairs of rockers and clusters of bistro tables and chairs beckon guests to sit a spell and sip on a Lion Tamer or Ghost Cup. It’s a perfect place to take in the bands that will parade by during Mardi Gras or to just soak up the spirit of New Orleans. “People emerge from behind their gates and mingle,” says Sara. “Everyone hangs out and tumbles into the street. And the fun of it is talking to random strangers. I mean, really, it’s like nowhere else. You have to get in. You have to get into it.”
DIAMOND VINTAGE POLISHEDFINISHBRASS ACCENTS CLEAR INTERIORSGLASSBY KELLY HOHLA INTERIORS ARCHITECTURE BY STUDIO AM BUILD BY HOXIE HUGGINS PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON LEITZ
p o rche S , l ike the c o S t ello ’ S w elcomin G V e randa, are e S S e ntial player S in n e w o r lean S e ntertainin G
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The motifs of a vintage cut-glass green decanter echo the vegetation in Sara’s garden.
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HYDE HEIRLOOM FINISH WITH CUSTOM FABRIC SHADE INTERIORS BY WESLEY INTERIORS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY HEIDI HARRIS
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GLASSES ON DISPLAY AT LUCULLUS ANTIQUES NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2022 10:13AM
ABOUT
FLICKINGER
GLASSWORK
THEY
BOTH SUCCINCT. THEY BOTH BOIL THINGS DOWN. AND THEY BOTH TELL THE TRUTH.”
FROM HIS WATERFRONT STUDIO IN BROOKLYN’S RED HOOK DISTRICT, MASTER CRAFTSMAN CHARLES FLICKINGER CREATES GLASSWORK FOR SOME OF THE MOST PROMINENT STRUCTURES IN THE WORLD. THE PROOF OF HIS SKILL IS ON DISPLAY FROM MANHATTAN TO LONDON TO BANGKOK—AND BEYOND.
CHARLES
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“POETRY IS A LOT LIKE WHEN YOU THINK IT. ARE
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Museum of Natural History. The list of places displaying Charles Flickinger’s glasswork includes some of the biggest landmarks in New York City. And that’s just his backyard.
Farmer, are part of Red Hook’s small but tight-knit residential enclave.)
For more than 35 years, Charles has been at the forefront of the glass bending industry, founding Flickinger Glassworks in 1985, and setting the standards for others to follow in the process.
The heart of Flickinger Glassworks is a stock of 4000-plus steel molds, many of them inherited or purchased from Charles’ many mentors. Which is, as our subject points out below, a fitting tribute to the legacy of both past craftsmen and of the craft itself.
We’re in the Flickinger Glassworks studio, on the historic Red Hook piers, a tidy workshop nestled in an industrial, waterfront pocket of Brooklyn, and the day is a perfect blend of June sunshine and breeze. Charles has left the doors open to enjoy the weather, a brief respite from the city’s summertime swelter, and the view of the water just beyond his front door. It’s a beautiful perch, a panoramic scene not often attributed to this corridor of gritty industry and its warehouseladen landscape. Still, it’s hard to look at anything other than the glass artwork.
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The translucent orbs of glass are at once muted and bold, and call to mind stained glass church windows, an early and enduring source of inspiration for Charles, who grew up attending a Presbyterian church in Norwalk, Ohio, and is a practicing Methodist in his adopted hometown. (Charles and his wife, Ann
As well as being beautiful, bent glass is supremely functional. It's used for everything from glass bowls for light fixtures to curved architectural walls and murals to slumped enamel tableware to clock faces and signage.
rand Central Station. Empire State Building. National Archives.
Clockface in Grand Central Station, NYC, restored by Flickinger Glassworks.
06 The rounded façade of The Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca. The glass oven.
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BREAKING THE MOLD
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Charles and his team of artisans are regarded as some of the best slumpedglass masters in the country, specializing in the kind of projects that require extreme precision to produce elegantly rounded surfaces. We first encountered his work over 15 years ago when we approached him to help us realize the curved elements of a challenging bespoke job for a century-old furniture maker. 01 Flickinger Glassworks. Glass molds. Cabinet containing glass treasures. Slumped glass.
Weon.can
CHARLES FLICKINGER AS TOLD TO THE URBAN ELECTRIC Co.
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That’s why even today, I keep my team small to just eight people. Over the years, I’ve trained or employed around a hundred people—craftsmen and craftswomen who have gone on to do glasswork, as well as ironwork and other artisan paths—but in general, it is a tight and curated group. We do big work but in a small way.
There were a lot of old-timers who taught me how to do this. And it’s easy to get excited and caught up in the process even after all of these decades. But then I stop—we stop—and go, “Wait a minute; yes, this is amazing, but it’s also about so much more than just us. Because, you know, we are just standing on the shoulders of the guys who led the way.”
Grand Central food concourse, creating safety glass for exhibition cases at the Museum of Natural History and so
do a lot thanks to this treasure trove of molds I’ve collected from my mentors and at various auctions— some of them are more than 150 years old! But we’re also creating new and original ones of our own.
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The art I’ve been exposed to in my life influences me in every way. I take painting classes from a Japanese instructor, Koho Yamamoto, who just turned 100 and is still teaching here in NYC. And I love literature. And poetry—nothing moves me like great poetry. Walt Whitman, Edith Bishop, Mark Strand. I just love poetry. I don’t read or write as much of it as I’d like these days, but it resonates with me nonetheless. Probably because it’s a lot like glasswork, when you think about it. They are both succinct. They both boil things down. And they both tell the truth.
The first thing you think about when you're working with glass, whether it's architectural or lighting or decorative, is structure. How are you going to support it? And so that's where we start and what we will build on.
But bending glass is not all we do. We also silk-screen, enamel, laminate, fuse and carve glass. Which is both a function of being super passionate about all things related to the process of transforming glass into art as well as an inherent side effect of being in business for such a long time.
My greatest sources of inspiration, beyond the mentors I learned from and my spirituality, are my own family. My grandfather owned a balloon factory. My grandmother fired pottery in her own kiln and taught me the power of a fire burning to 2,000 degrees. Even my parents worked with their hands to a certain extent; while they did not exactly build their house from scratch, they did make it from the ground up, in a sense, using a 1940s Sears kit. And so much of my creative drive comes from my mother. She was a fearless seeker, a traveler who was always curious and wanting to explore. She loved taking us to places around the world, places she was interested in that she thought we could learn from, culturally, too.
We’ve had to learn as we go, and then we’ve applied those skills to future work—historic restoration, lighting the
We have 7,000 square feet here in the Red Hook shop, and our footprint, in terms of the spaces we reach, is much larger. But the effect when people walk through the workshop is the real tell. The reactions usually go something like, “Wow! This is interesting. Unusual.” And it is, especially in the world we live in today! To see people making a living with their hands—well, it’s really something special.
We bend glass just as the master craftsmen of Europe did in the 18th century, by slumping sheets into steel molds. But we don’t shy away from modern innovation, either: Our custom kilns use infrared technology for better energy efficiency, ensuring they produce the finest bent glass for the best price. That distinction is important and sets us apart.
Like I said, our team is small so we have to be resourceful. And, really, the curving possibilities are endless when it comes to glass, and the work we do, well, it truly enhances the architectural landscape of the world around it. Let’s put it this way, if you can imagine it, chances are we can do it—and probably already have.
opened my doors in 1985. Back then, it was just me armed with the knowledge of people who came before and a lot of enthusiasm to be a part of that tradition.
Glass panel entering the oven to begin the bending process.
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ESME DOUBLE POLISHED BRASS FINISH WITH CUSTOM FABRIC SHADES INTERIORS BY DAKOTA WILLIMON, ARCHITECTURE BY MARY MAC WILSON
KRONAM VINTAGE FINISH ANTIQUE BRASS ACCENTS CAPSE FLUSH ANTIQUE BRASS FINISH A CREATIVE COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE URBAN ELECTRIC CO., ALLISON ABNEY INTERIORS, DANIEL BECK ARCHITECTURE AND GROSSMAN BUILDING GROUP.
NEEDLES HANG VINTAGE FINISH ANTIQUE GILT ACCENTS SEEDED INTERIORSGLASSBYCATE GROSCH ARCHITECTURE BY JIM STOECKER ARCHITECTS INC PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE RUSSO
