The Collection

A vast majority of the objects in the house today belonged to the Glessner family. Discover more about the collections at Glessner House through the stories of the artists and designers who created the objects which the Glessners owned and cherished. Descendants of John and Frances Glessner have generously donated these items to the house, where they continue to be cared for in their original setting, providing an authentic experience for our visitors.

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Object of the Month

December 2024 - Deed of Gift to the Chicago Chapter AIA, 1924

On December 1, 1924 – exactly 100 years ago – John and Frances Glessner deeded their beloved H. H. Richardson-designed home at 1800 South Prairie Avenue to the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. It was one of the very first acts of historic preservation in the city and came at a moment when the 37-year-old house was more threatened than ever.

In 1922, the other Richardson-designed house in Chicago, built on North Lake Shore Drive for Franklin and Emily MacVeagh, was demolished and replaced with a towering apartment building. The next year saw the demolition of the Richardson-designed house for John Glessner’s former business partner, Benjamin Warder, and his wife Ellen, in Washington, D.C. (although the façade was salvaged and reassembled on the front of a new building). Closer to home, the George Pullman and Hugh McBirney Sr. houses, which occupied the northeast and northwest corners of Prairie Avenue and 18th Street respectively, had both been recently demolished. Additional Prairie Avenue houses had been converted into business offices or rooming houses, and the Zoning Ordinance of 1923 designated the entire neighborhood for commercial and manufacturing purposes.

In early 1924, architect Alfred Hoyt Granger, president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) approached John Glessner with an offer. The organization was interested in securing a building for club purposes, and “it was suggested that the well-known Glessner house would be an ideal building to house the architectural profession in Chicago. The Glessner home has long been recognized by the profession as the gem production of Mr. Richardson and the outstanding example of his genius in this part of the country.” Their request was simple – they asked that John Glessner make a stipulation in his will that the organization be offered the opportunity to purchase the house before it went on to the open market. John Glessner received the request favorably, and after consultation with his family, made the decision to donate the house to the AIA.

The details were worked out and an elaborate Deed of Gift, shown here, was prepared and signed by John and Frances Glessner and Alfred Granger on December 1, 1924. The massive deed, with its gold frame, measures 31” by 43” inches and weighs nearly fifty pounds. The deed came with several provisions:

§  The house would be used “solely for the purposes of architecture and the allied arts and sciences, such as an architectural museum and gallery, an architectural library, a place of assemblage for legitimate meetings of architectural organizations, and an atelier for the instruction of younger men in the principles of the architectural profession and offices of administration.”

§  The house would be known as GLESSNER HOUSE.

§  The building would be preserved “architecturally in the same condition as when received” although alterations could be made, as needed, to the garage, kitchen wing, and servants’ quarters.

§  Richardson’s monogram, carved in granite on the front of the house would remain intact and visible, and his large portrait hanging in the main hall would be moved and displayed in the library.

§  The Glessners would retain a life tenancy in the house.

§  The AIA would acquire the Kimball house across the street at 1801 Prairie for use as an Architects’ Club until such time as the organization received possession of the Glessner house.

On January 1, 1925, the Glessners held a reception at their home for members of the AIA. Soon after, the AIA acquired the Kimball house for $82,500 and the Architects’ Club opened. The same year saw John Glessner elected to honorary membership in both the Club and the national AIA. Over the next few years John Glessner must have thought often about the sound decision he had made. The remaining three Richardson-designed houses in Washington, D.C. were all torn down, and the other two Richardson-designed buildings in Chicago were both razed in 1930, making the Glessners’ house the last example of the architect’s work in the city.

Frances Glessner died in October 1932 and John Glessner in January 1936, at which point ownership of the house passed to the AIA. With the shadow of the Great Depression hanging over the country, and the Architects’ Club struggling to survive, the AIA made the difficult decision in April 1937 to convey the house back to the Glessner heirs. The Glessners’ daughter, Frances Glessner Lee, spent the next year identifying an organization that would fulfill her parents’ wishes to preserve the building, and in early 1938, the house was gifted to the Armour Institute (now Illinois Tech).

Although the gift of the house by the Glessners to the AIA ultimately failed, it was an important early chapter in the history of Chicago’s preservation movement. And in an ironic twist of fate, after the house was saved from demolition in 1966, the AIA moved their offices into two former bedrooms on the second floor, and remained at 1800 for several years.

November 2024 - Two salt cellars made by Frances Macbeth Glessner

On November 29, 1904 – exactly 120 years ago – Frances Glessner had her first lesson in silversmithing. Originally studying under Madeline Yale Wynne, she soon engaged two additional teachers, Annibale Fogliata and Frederik W. Sandberg, as her interest in metalwork deepened. Over the next decade or so, she produced hundreds of pieces, almost all of which were presented as gifts to friends and family members.

The two salt cellars shown here were early products of her craft. The bottom piece, which measures 2-7/8 inches in diameter, was presented to her husband as a Christmas gift in 1904, less than a month after launching her new pursuit. The top piece, measuring 2-1/4 inches in diameter, was a Christmas gift to her brother Charles Edgar Macbeth in 1905. Both exhibit her trademark hammered finish, representing the process of hammering the sheet silver against wooden forms. The finish is typical of Arts & Crafts silver of the period, and distinguished it from machine made pieces. They are unadorned, their beauty being derived from the graceful forms.

The piece for her husband is engraved on the underside, “MADE BY F.M.G. FOR J.J.G. DEC. 25TH 1904.” It was passed down through the family before being returned to the house by a great-grandson. The salt cellar for her brother is engraved “MADE FOR C.E.M. BY F.M.G.” around the upper lip. It was discovered by a collector in 2019 in a Seattle thrift store and purchased for $2.00; research confirmed that the initials F.M.G. were for Frances Macbeth Glessner. The style of the lettering on the latter is consistent with other pieces she produced and was likely added by a jeweler. Neither piece features her silver mark – an uppercase G centered with a honeybee (representing her hobby of beekeeping). 

Her brother wrote a note of thanks, dated December 15, 1905:
My dear Fanny,
Many, many thanks for the lovely and artistic piece of silver – the work of your own hands. Just to think of a sister of mine being able to make something out of metal makes me feel proud. Oh, you little silversmith, I am prouder of you than ever – and I thank you again for having remembered me in such a perfectly delightful way.
Most affectionately yours,
Charley

The use of salt cellars dates back to ancient Rome, when salt was a rare and expensive commodity. By the Middle Ages, large master salts were being produced; they were also known as standing salts since they were not passed around the table. The prized salt, which tended to clump into one large lump, was placed into the master salt, where it was broken up and then placed into smaller, individual salt cellars for each guest. By the 17th century, tiny spoons, measuring two to three inches in length and known as salt spoons, were made to aid the diner in sprinkling the salt over their food.

Salt cellars started to fall out of fashion after 1911, when anti-caking agents were first added to salt, making it pourable and leading to the development of salt shakers. The Glessners owned more than two dozen sterling silver salt cellars of assorted designs, which would have been an essential part of the elaborate table settings for their eight-course dinners. Many would have likely held a glass liner, often cobalt blue, as salt is corrosive and will damage the surface of the silver.

The two salt cellars shown here are outstanding examples of Frances Glessner’s silver work, and are quaint reminders of a time when etiquette dictated that each guest at a well-appointed table be provided with their own supply of salt.

October 2024 - Print of the New York Senate Chamber

This print, depicting H. H. Richardson’s Senate Chamber in the New York state capitol in Albany, is taken from the June 4, 1898, issue of The American Architect and Building News. Measuring 13 by 17-1/2 inches, the double page spread was only included in the International and Imperial editions of the publication. These prints are known as Gelatine prints as they were produced using a gelatin layer containing silver particles to create the image. It was made by The Heliotype Printing Co. of Boston.

The American Architect and Building News was a weekly architectural periodical published in Boston between 1876 and 1938, when it was absorbed into Architectural Record. The image was taken by Harry Herbert Sidman, a talented photographer who created many images for the publication. He died in 1903 at the age of just 36.

The history of the design and construction of the state capitol building is complex. Construction began in December 1867 from plans by Thomas Fuller (1822-1898), who had previously designed the Canadian government buildings in Ottawa. By 1874, funds had run out, and a new commission was formed, chaired by Lieutenant Governor William Dorsheimer (for whom Richardson had designed a house in Buffalo). Dorsheimer appointed an advisory board that included Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, and architect Leopold Eidlitz. Their report was critical of Fuller’s work and included a recommendation to shift the style from Renaissance to Romanesque. By the summer of 1876, Fuller had been dismissed, and the advisory board members were officially engaged as the architects.

Richardson and Eidlitz divided responsibilities for the redesign of the building. The exterior was developed jointly, with Richardson being given full control over the Senate and executive chambers, the second court of appeals, the state library, and the western stair. The final plan of the Senate chamber reduced its overall size, creating two lobbies over which Richardson inserted arcaded visitors’ galleries. The room is over fifty feet in height and has an oak-beamed ceiling. Several types of stone were used including Knoxville granite, Siena marble, Mexican onyx, and a red-brown granite from Scotland. Gold-leafed embossed leather panels adorn the upper walls. Richardson designed the furniture, including a spectacular grandfather clock, which keeps the official time for the Senate to this day. Augustus Saint-Gaudens created designs for life-sized carvings over the two fireplaces, depicting Moses and the Ten Commandments and King John and the Magna Carta, but these were never executed. The Senate chamber was completed and occupied in 1881.

An extensive restoration and renovation campaign was undertaken in the late 1970s to remove later alterations and return the room to its original appearance. Work included everything from the cleaning and repair of the wood, stone, and leather, to the restoration of the leaded glass windows, and the replication of the original Axminster carpet. Sculptor Corrado Parducci was brought in carve the lintels over the five doorways, centered by profile portraits of the five architects involved in the original project – Fuller, Eidlitz, Olmsted, Isaac Perry, and Richardson.

Note: A stamp on the back of the print indicates it was originally held in the collection of the Carnegie Free Library in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Allegheny was a separate city until being absorbed by Pittsburgh in 1907. The library there was the first of 2,509 libraries built worldwide with funds provided by industrialist Andrew Carnegie and matched by local municipalities.

September 2024 - “Pointe du Raz” etching by Gravesande

The Glessners amassed a significant collection of engravings and etchings to adorn the walls of their home. Although most were vintage pieces, some dating back as far as the late 15th century, a few were modern, showing their interest in current artists and trends. A good example of this is the “Pointe du Raz” etching by the Dutch artist Carel Nicolaas Storm van’s Gravesande.

Gravesande was born in 1841 into an aristocratic family in Breda, a city in the southern part of the Netherlands. His father discouraged the young boy’s interest in art, sending him to the University of Leiden, where he graduated with a law degree in 1865. Three years later, he abandoned law and moved to Brussels, where he studied with several artists, including the etcher Félicien Rops. He returned to the Netherlands in 1893 and became a member of the Hague School, a group of artists influenced by the realism of the French Barbizon School. He was awarded a gold medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris and is credited with creating a renewed interest in etching as an independent art form. During his career he produced more than 400 etchings, many of which were landscapes and seascapes. His work is included in major museums across Europe and the United States, including the Art Institute of Chicago, which holds eighteen of his pieces. He died in 1924.

Etching is an intaglio technique in which the design is incised into the surface of a metal plate. The plate, usually copper, zinc, or steel, is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist uses a pointed etching needle to scratch off the ground, exposing the bare metal to create the lines of the design. The plate is then dipped or washed with acid, known as the “mordant” (French for “biting”). The acid bites the metal to a depth dependent on the amount of time it is left in place. Once the process is complete, the remaining ground is cleaned off the plate.

To make a print, the plate is inked all over and then wiped cleaned, leaving ink only in the etched areas. The plate and a sheet of paper are then inserted into a high-pressure printing press, where the ink is transferred from the etched lines onto the paper, creating the print. Several hundred prints can be made from a single plate.

In January 1887, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston opened an exhibition of 151 etchings and dry points by Gravesande. The catalogue noted that “Pointe du Raz” was part of his most recent series of plates published in 1886 and was made using traditional etching. Most of the others in the series used the dry point method, a type of engraving he had recently started using. A review of the exhibition noted:

“The collection of etchings by Charles Storm van Gravesande, recently placed on view in the first print room, cannot fail to attract great attention and admiration. Van Gravesande is one of the great living etchers, taking place with Whistler and Haden. . . Van Gravesande is essentially a poet; his latest plates are strongest because of their feeling . . . It is impossible to speak of all of the recent proofs; they are superb. The bitten plates are stronger than ever in their deep, massive lines.”

The proof of “Pointe du Raz” exhibited in Boston is now in the collection of the Rijskmuseum in Amsterdam. The Glessners acquired their “Pointe du Raz” etching from their favorite dealer, Frederick Keppel & Co. of New York. The receipt, dated December 23, 1887 (just three weeks after they moved into their Prairie Avenue home), shows they paid $36.00 for the print, simply identified as “Rocks.”

The Pointe du Raz is a famous promontory and popular tourist destination that extends west into the Atlantic from the extreme northwestern part of the department of Finistère in Brittany, France. It is named for the Raz de Sein, a dangerous waterway between it and the island of Sein, located due west. “La Vieille” lighthouse was constructed in 1887 on the distant outcropping seen in the upper left portion of the print and still operates.

The Glessners placed their etching in an unadorned cherry frame and hung it on the landing of the main stairs, where it remains today.

August 2024 - Medal from the 1900 Paris Exposition

This bronze medal was awarded to Warder, Bushnell and Glessner at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, more commonly known in the United States as the Paris Exposition. It was designed by Jules-Clément Chaplain (1839-1909), a French sculptor who helped found the Art Nouveau movement. He was named the official medalist of the French government in 1877, designing coinage and special medals, including all those for the Exposition.

The front of the 2-1/2 inch diameter medal features the head of Marianne, the national symbol of the French Republic. To her left is an oak tree which forms a wreath around her head; to her right is a scene of Paris. REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE is written around the edge. The back of the medal, which is executed in high relief, is centered by the figure of winged Victory, holding a laurel wreath and palm branch in her right hand. A male figure, seated on Victory’s back, holds a torch in his left hand. Below Victory is a depiction of the Grand Palais, which housed the collection of paintings and sculptures exhibited at the fair. The legend includes the year 1900 and EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE INTERNATIONALE around the perimeter. A small plaque near the bottom is inscribed “WARDER, BUSHNELL ET GLESSNER COMPANY.”

The Exposition Universelle of 1900 took place in Paris from April 14 to November 12, 1900, being the sixth major exposition in the city since 1855. The exposition drew more than fifty million people, and components included the 1900 Summer Olympics, the second ever held in modern times. The Olympics were vastly different than today, with no opening and closing ceremonies, and events taking place over 5-1/2 months from May through October. Highlights of the exposition included a Ferris wheel, a moving sidewalk, the first passenger trolley bus, escalators, diesel engines, electric cars, and talking films.

The exposition brought international attention to the Art Nouveau style, which had become fashionable in Europe and the United States during the 1890s. Although most of the buildings were designed in the Beaux-Arts and Belle Epoque styles, extensive Art Nouveau decoration was used for many of the interiors. Decorative arts in the style included pieces by jeweler Fouquet, glass and crystal manufactory Lalique, and the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory. The artist Alfons Mucha contributed everything from posters and menu covers to murals and other interior decorations.

Surviving buildings from the exposition include the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais (featuring Mucha murals), the Gare d’Orsay railroad station, and the Paris Métro Line 1 with its iconic entrances by Hector Guimard.

The Warder, Bushnell and Glessner exhibit was housed in the U.S. Agricultural Annex building, alongside exhibits featuring the products of the Deering Harvester Company, Plano Manufacturing, and Milwaukee Harvester, among others. The McCormick Harvesting Company erected its own building, decorated with a huge scenic panorama depicting its mammoth works in Chicago. Just two years after the exposition, the five companies merged to form International Harvester.

July 2024 - Plan of Chicago

In October 1906, the Merchants’ Club of Chicago announced plans to launch a project for beautifying the city, as noted in the Chicago Tribune:

“Comprehensive plans for the development of the city along architectural lines, with beautiful public places and driveways, a connecting north and south boulevard, an outer parkway extending the entire length of the city along the lake front, and in time an outer park system, will be prepared under direction of the Merchants’ club.”

 Architect Daniel H. Burnham, who had already prepared similar plans for Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Manila, was placed in charge of the work. Donating his services, he noted that he “intends to make the Chicago plan in its entirety the masterpiece of his life.” Assisting him in the plan was architect Edward H. Bennett, with architect Charles Moore providing editorial review.

When the Merchants’ Club merged with the Commercial Club the next year, that Club undertook carrying the project forward to completion. (Note: John Glessner was a member of both clubs, later writing a history of each, and had served as president of the Commercial Club in 1897-98).

Glessner was also one of more than 300 subscribers to the plan, providing the funding for the corps of assistant engineers, topographical surveyors, and draftsmen hired for the work, headquartered in offices on the top floor of the Railway Exchange building. The American muralist Jules Guérin was engaged to create several large scale color illustrations for use in both the printed copy of the plan and an exhibition.

The Glessners were close friends with Daniel Burnham. In a letter to Frances Glessner, he wrote, in part:

“You and your man are wonders to me, and it is with deep gratitude to you both, because you let me use the term, that I sign myself your loving friend, D. H. Burnham.”

They had several opportunities to learn about the plan as it progressed over the next two years. Frances Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class hosted a special meeting on Thursday, April 4, 1907, at the Woman’s Athletic Club at which Burnham explained his plans for an outer parkway and lake front improvements. In December of that year, she attended a presentation by Burnham given to The Fortnightly.

The Glessners were invited by Burnham to a special luncheon on January 19, 1908:

“. . . to see the drawings of the plan of Chicago. The hour is one o’clock, and the few people invited are friends of yours. You have seen only a few of the things we will show you on that day.”

Frances Glessner recorded in her journal:

“John and I lunched in Mr. Burnham’s office to look at the plans made for Chicago in the future. Mr. & Mrs. Chalmers, Lathrop, Hall McCormick, John Clark, Chas. Deering were there beside Mr. & Mrs. Burnham and six or more young men prominent in Mr. B’s office. Mr. Peirce Anderson was there. We had a delightful, informal, interesting time.”

The completed plan was presented to the City Council in July 1909 at which time the Chicago Plan Commission was created to oversee implementation, chaired by Charles H. Wacker.

The first edition of the plan, limited to 1,650 copies, was published by the Commercial Club, and printed by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company at the Lakeside Press in Chicago. John Glessner, as a subscriber, received copy number 61. The beautifully bound volume measures 10 by 12-1/2 inches and is nearly 1-1/4 inches thick. It includes all of Guérin’s color bird’s-eye views and several fold outs of additional illustrations and maps.

Portions of the plan were realized, including sections of downtown and developing the lakefront, and it became an important influence on the new field of city planning. Focus on the plan faded during the Great Depression, but aspects of the plan continued to guide planners, and civic leaders still reference the plan and Burnham’s vision for the city, and his famous directive to “make no little plans.”

June 2024 - Chest of drawers made by Isaac Scott

On May 23, 2024, the restored and rebuilt walnut chest of drawers was returned to Frances Glessner’s dressing room. For the first time in nearly 90 years, the full suite of furniture designed and carved by Isaac Scott in 1877 – bed, dresser, and chest – can be seen together as intended, their unified design once again revealed.

In October 1877, Frances Glessner noted in her journal, “gave commission to Mr. Scott to make the furniture and change the woodwork in downstairs bedroom, but this was not completed and put up until January.” The first floor bedroom in their home at the northeast corner of Washington and Morgan Streets was quite large, providing ample space for the furniture and an elaborate mantlepiece he designed for the sitting area. The remodeling was likely done in anticipation of the birth of Fanny in March 1878, at which time a beautiful walnut crib, also made by Scott, was added to the room.

When the Glessners commissioned their new Prairie Avenue home from H. H. Richardson, they planned to bring their Scott designed bedroom furniture with them. The dresser and chest were to be placed in Frances Glessner’s dressing room, and the room was designed accordingly. The dresser was placed on the north wall, opposite a full wall of closets on the south. The entrance to the bathroom was placed on the west wall.

The chest was centered on the east wall, but this presented a challenge, as this was the only wall with windows. To accommodate the chest, the windows sit high above the floor, the only windows in the house to do so. During the restoration of the piece, it was determined that the top edge of the center rail gives the piece a height of exactly 50 inches. A measurement of the east wall confirms that the bottom edge of the window trim (visible at the top of the photo above) is also exactly 50 inches off the floor. This provides an interesting example of how a piece of furniture can directly impact the design of the building into which it is to be placed.

Following the deaths of the Glessners in the 1930s, the bedroom furniture was passed down to their daughter, Frances Glessner Lee, and ended up in her New Hampshire cottage at The Rocks estate. At some point after her death in 1962, the top portion of the chest was cut off – including the center section with mirrored door, the galleries, and the carved panels. It ended up in the home of her granddaughter, Percy Lee Langstaff. (The bed and dresser were returned to Glessner House, intact, in the late 1960s).

In May 2017, Executive Director and Curator William Tyre had the privilege to visit Percy Langstaff in her Maryland home. Invited to spend the night, he settled into a guest room where he noticed the unusual drawer pulls on the chest. Once back in Chicago, he quickly determined they matched the pulls on the dresser, and further research confirmed the piece was the missing chest. Upon discussing it with Percy, she noted that she was unaware the chest originated in Chicago, as her earliest memories of the piece dated from the 1930s when it was already at her grandmother’s cottage at The Rocks.

Percy donated the chest of drawers to Glessner House in May 2022, just a few months before she passed away at the age of 93. Later that year, Tyre celebrated his 15th anniversary as director and curator, and gifts received for that event were earmarked for the restoration of the chest.

In December 2023, Patrick Burke, of Atelier Burke, came to Glessner House to deliver the new reproduction dining room table and sideboard. He picked up the chest, and at the same time took molds of the carvings on the dresser to be used as patterns for the chest carvings. Further clues to the missing portion of the chest came from a surviving design drawing by Scott, and one historic photo taken in the Glessners’ bedroom at their Washington Street house. Burke and his team meticulously recreated every element of the chest from the carved end panels to the intricate galleries with their rows of squat turnings. The finish was in poor condition, but rather than stripping the piece, the finish was carefully reworked to preserve the patina, with the new finish on the upper portion toned to match exactly.

The chest has had a long, complicated journey from its creation in 1877 to its restoration in 2024, but today the piece can be seen exactly as it was designed and carved by Isaac Scott, thanks to the talents of Patrick Burke.

May 2024 - Library mantel made by Isaac Scott

Isaac Scott (1845-1920) was a close friend of the Glessners and designed countless items for their homes including picture frames, furniture, decorative objects, and embroideries. This mantel was made for the Glessners’ library in their previous home, located at the northeast corner of Washington and Morgan streets. It was installed in March 1877, just 18 months after the Glessners met Scott and commissioned their first pieces from him.

The walnut mantel is a tour-de-force of carving and design, and shows not only Scott’s considerable abilities, but his familiarity with design trends of the time including the work of British designer Charles Eastlake and the German-born American designer Daniel Pabst. The mantel, which replaced a typical incised marble fireplace surround of the era, also functioned to showcase the Glessners’ growing collection of decorative arts, with tall compartments to either side of the firebox, and two shallow compartments directly above.

Many of the objects visible in the historic photograph (lower image above) remain in the collection today, including the pair of Japanese vases, the two large round Pilgrim bottle vases (also by Scott), and framed tiles painted by Frances Glessner’s sister, Helen Macbeth. Five tiles attributed to the British painter Henry Holiday, depicting the story of Lancelot and Elaine as told in Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, were set directly above the firebox, and are now displayed on the plate rail in the main hall.

The top of the mantel is framed in billet molding consisting of small, elongated cylinders. The front edge of the mantel shelf has a repeating pattern of leaves and buds, possibly depicting geraniums. The shelf is supported on four brackets, with alternating designs of highly conventionalized flowers and leaves, and pairs of squat spindles set in between. Above the firebox, a diamond fret molding is divided into five sections capped with shallow segmental arches, to complement the five tiles that were originally installed below. The paneled compartments to either side of the firebox, set beneath additional segmental arches, feature saw tooth trim, turnings, reeding, and more conventionalized flowers. Several of the details relate to other pieces Scott made for the library, including two bookcases, a writing desk, and a table.

When the Glessners moved to their new Prairie Avenue home in December 1887, they brought this mantel with them (as well as a second mantel Scott made for their bedroom), as they knew the Washington Street house was to be demolished for construction of a coffin factory. The next summer, the mantels were shipped to their summer estate, The Rocks, in New Hampshire, and this mantel (with a modified firebox) was installed in the sitting room of their home, known simply as the Big House.

By the mid-1940s, the Big House had come into possession of their grandson, John Jacob Glessner II, who had it razed in 1946. Prior to that, the contents of the house were auctioned off, and the Glessners’ daughter, Frances Glessner Lee, acquired a number of pieces including the two Scott-designed mantels. She never installed them in her home, but safely stored them in a building at The Rocks, near her own cottage.

In 1968, her daughter, Martha Lee Batchelder, made the first of many large donations of objects to Glessner House. That first donation, consisting of more than 140 items, included dozens of items by Isaac Scott, including the two mantels. Today, they are displayed in George’s bedroom. The mantels could have easily been lost at various points in their history, so we are grateful that three generations of the Glessner family cared for them over nine decades, so that visitors today can continue to appreciate Scott’s remarkable artistry.

April 2024 - Photochrom print of Austin Hall

This photograph shows the main entrance into Austin Hall, completed in 1884 to house the Law School at Harvard University. The Glessners displayed the photo in the cork alcove adjacent to their library, beside a large engraving of Boston’s Trinity Church, and a portrait of Henry Hobson Richardson, the architect of both buildings (and Glessner House). It appears to have been one of the Glessner’s favorite buildings by Richardson, as they also owned a large portfolio of photographs of Austin Hall, issued in 1886 as part of the Monographs of American Architecture series published by The American Architect and Building News. By coincidence, when their son George moved into his suite of three rooms in the Hastings residence hall at Harvard in 1891, Austin Hall would have been the view directly outside his windows.

In 1879, Edward Austin, who made his fortune in railroads, approached the president of Harvard about funding a building on the campus, even though he had never attended. President Charles W. Eliot (one of the Glessners’ closest friends) discussed the need for a larger building for the law school. Although Austin noted that he “detested lawyers,” he provided more than $140,000 to construct the building in memory of his older brother, Samuel.

Henry Hobson Richardson received the commission for the building in February 1881, having designed the nearby Sever Hall for Harvard three years earlier. Whereas Sever, with its all brick exterior, was meant to blend in with the existing buildings at Harvard Yard, Austin Hall was a more typical expression of Richardson’s work at the time, being composed entirely of stone. The overall plan was T-shape, with a two-story central block containing a large lecture room with reading room above, and one-story wings to either side, each with an additional lecture room.

As seen in the photograph, the front façade is dominated by a series of three massive Romanesque arches composed of Ohio sandstone. An elaborate carving program included the column capitals, featuring a variety of real and mythological creatures. To the left of the arches, Richardson included a stone with his monogram, set amidst his architect’s tools and other symbols displaying his reliance on “Golden Section” proportioning. A broad horizontal band of alternating light and dark blocks of Longmeadow sandstone sits above the arches, emphasizing the overall horizontal feel of the building. The back side of the building is an entirely different composition, and is anchored by the large central block. Early Richardson biographer Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer regarded this elevation as one of Richardson’s most beautiful designs.

The interior is richly decorated as well. The most elaborate space is the soaring reading room on the second floor, featuring exposed tie beams carved with the heads of dragons and wild boars, and secured with decorative iron strapwork. The room also features a massive fireplace composed of stone and brick, with a carved panel in memory of Samuel Austin.

The Glessner’s photograph was copyrighted in 1900 by the Detroit Photographic Company, founded in the late 1890s to produce color postcards and prints. The company secured the rights to a special printing process known as Photochrom, developed by Hans Jakob Schmid of Orell Fussli & Co. in Switzerland. Also known as the Aäc process, it involved hand painting black and white negatives to create color lithographic printing plates, with each color requiring a separate plate. The back of the mount is stamped “Aäc Photograph – We Photograph the World in the Colors of Nature – Detroit Photographic Company: Scenic and Art Publishers, Detroit, Michigan.” A label from the retailer indicates that the Glessners acquired the photograph in the shop of G. J. Esselen, located on Bromfield Street in Boston.

The building remains in use by the Law School.

Click here to be redirected to our jigsaw puzzle featuring this image.

March 2024 - Portrait of Francis Beidler

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Chicago lumberman and philanthropist Francis Beidler. Shown above is an engraving of Beidler taken from volume 5 of the six volume Industrial Chicago, published in 1894 by the Goodspeed Publishing Company of Chicago. Volume 5, “The Lumber Interests,” was written by George W. Hotchkiss, a prominent journalist who came to Chicago in 1877 and wrote extensively on the lumber trade, until taking over as editor of the Evanston Press in 1892.

Francis Beidler was born in Chicago in 1854, his father Jacob being one of the most successful lumbermen in the city. He was raised in the family home at the northeast corner of Washington and Morgan streets on the near west side. In 1874, that home was sold to John and Frances Glessner, and they remained there until moving to Prairie Avenue in December 1887.

Beidler went to work for his father at the age of 16, and in 1874 helped form the South Branch Lumber Company of which he served as secretary; in later years it was reorganized as Francis Beidler & Co. With Benjamin F. Ferguson, he co-founded the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company in 1881, acquiring 165,000 acres of land in central South Carolina. (Over 18,000 acres survive today as the Francis Beidler Forest, an Audubon wildlife sanctuary and the largest virgin stand of cypress-tupelo forest in the world). He also operated lumber firms in New York and North Dakota. Having earned the respect of those in the industry, he was appointed the first president of the Lumberman’s Association when it was formed in the 1880s.

Beidler died on March 4, 1924, in his home at 4736 S. Drexel Blvd. The provisions of his will reflected the growing trend in Chicago at the time for wealthy businessmen to establish charitable foundations to continue their philanthropic work. The estate was estimated at $3 million (the equivalent of more than $50 million today). More than half of the estate was set aside to establish the Francis Beidler Foundation for charitable and patriotic purposes. An interesting provision funded flags for every classroom at the Jacob Beidler School, 3151 W. Walnut Street, named for his father. Additionally, each student, upon graduation, would be provided with copies of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

His widow, Elizabeth, received the family home and an annual annuity. Their two children, Francis, Jr. and Elizabeth, each received $500,000 with this request:

“It is my wish that my son will incline to scientific study, statesmanship or political pursuits. It also is my wish that my daughter will be inclined to spend much of her time in charitable pursuits. In furtherance of this desire of mine, I have amply provided for my children. I wish them to work in furthering the interests of their country rather than for the accumulation of more money.”

The Foundation remains active today, and Glessner House is fortunate to have been a beneficiary of Beidler’s generosity. In 1974, the Foundation funded the buildout of the second floor Beidler Conference Room, created from the former conservatory and adjacent walk-in closets. Ongoing grants, provided annually over the past 50 years, are used for the maintenance and refreshing of the room as needed. This year, funds are being used to upgrade the lighting, replace the carpeting, repair and refinish the adjacent hallway floor, and install a 65” monitor for use during meetings.

February 2024 - “In the Studio” etching

The Glessners were avid collectors of etchings and steel engravings, and many of the pieces are still exhibited in the house today. “In the Studio” would have had special meaning for the couple, as they visited the Paris studio depicted. The visit was recorded in a journal entry by John Glessner dated February 28, 1890:

“We went to call on Munkacsy at his studio. The ceiling of this was very high. On the stairway going up was a magnificent bust of Munkacsy by Barrias. The reception room was furnished with screens and sofas and hangings, had a bright fire burning and was filled with French callers. Mr. M. called his wife, who speaks English, but she was at the other end of the room and did not reach us. He took us into his studio, through a door draped with 3 or 4 thicknesses of hangings, and we sat there on a corner sofa awhile talking with him through Miss Scharff. He regretted not speaking English as we did our lack of French. He had no work done and apparently little in progress. The studio had a stuffed horse in it and some stuffs and was very light.”

Mihály Munkácsy was one of Hungary’s most revered and important late 19th century painters, who earned an international reputation for his genre pictures and large-scale Biblical paintings. He was born Mihály Leó Lieb in 1844 in Munkács, Hungary, then part of the Austrian Empire, and now the Ukrainian city of Mukachevo. His mother died when he was an infant and his father was killed when he was four, during the 1848 Hungarian Revolution. The young boy was raised by an uncle who supported his growing interest in art. In 1868, he changed his last name to honor the place of his birth.

Munkácsy achieved widespread recognition in 1869 for his painting, “The Last Day of a Condemned Man,” which was awarded the Gold Medal at the Paris Salon the next year. He moved permanently to Paris in 1872 and befriended the Baron and Baronesse De Marches. The Baron died in 1873, and a year later, Munkácsy married his widow, which opened the door to the Parisian upper classes, and provided the financial resources to establish a luxurious studio and pursue his artistic endeavors.

In 1876, he completed a large oil painting, “In the Studio,” upon which our engraving is based. (The original is now in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery). The artist is standing at center, and his wife Cécile, who also acted as his manager, is examining the painting on his easel. The identity of the young child standing at far left is unknown as neither of them had any children. The two central figures are positioned in front of a tall fireplace, with abundant ornaments all around – the very same setting where the Glessners sat and talked with the artist, through Miss Violette Scharff, Fanny’s paid companion, who spoke fluent English and French.

The painting was made into an etching by 1884, when it appeared in the July 12 issue of Harper’s Weekly. The etcher was Karl Köpping/Koepping (1848-1914), a native of Dresden who trained as a painter and printmaker, and later taught etching at the Berlin Academy. Koepping’s original pencil signature appears below the lower right hand corner of the Glessners’ copy. To the left of his signature, he added an ink remarque – a small original bit of artwork. It depicts half of an apple and a crumpled woman’s evening glove. An enlarged view of the remarque is shown at the bottom of the image above.

Munkácsy enjoyed a successful career. Among his better known works are “The Blind Milton Dictating ‘Paradise Lost’ to his Daughters” (now in the collection of the New York Public Library), “Hungarian Conquest” for the House of Parliament in Budapest, and “Glorification of the Renaissance,” a ceiling fresco for the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. His health declined in the mid-1890s, and he died in a mental hospital in Bonn, Germany in 1900.

It is not known exactly when the Glessners acquired their etching, but it was no doubt purchased as a remembrance of their 1890 meeting with Munkácsy in his studio. They had the etching set into a simple oak frame with a gold wash and hung it in the parlor guestroom.

January 2024 - The Autobiography of Henry M. Stanley

On January 1, 1891, Frances Glessner recorded in her journal that she and her husband attended a reception at the home of Franklin and Emily MacVeagh, 1400 N. Lake Shore Drive, given in honor of the famous explorer, Henry M. Stanley (shown above in 1890). Although she noted “Mr. Stanley was a disappointment,” she found his wife, the English artist Dorothy Tennant Stanley, “pleasant and bright.”

The Glessner library contains three volumes written by Stanley: the two volume Through the Dark Continent published in 1878, and The Autobiography of Henry M. Stanley published posthumously in 1909. Each volume of Through the Dark Continent features half-leather binding, with marbled covers, endsheets, and edges. A pocket on the inside back cover of each volume contains a large fold-out map of the regions Stanley explored. He coined the term “dark continent” in the book, a reference to the portions of the African jungle that were so dense that almost no sunlight made it to the ground. The volumes recount his 999-day journey from 1874 to 1877, financed by the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph, to explore and document the lakes and rivers in central Africa, and to locate the source of the Nile River. Stanley also explored the Lualaba, which had been renamed in honor of Dr. David Livingstone, who started mapping the river prior to his death in 1873. Now known as the Congo River, Stanley traced it all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Autobiography of Henry M. Stanley contains the autobiography as left unfinished when he died in May 1904. It was carefully edited by his wife Dorothy, who wrote the preface to defend her husband’s honor. She wrote, in part:

“The ungenerous conduct displayed toward Stanley by a portion of the Press and Public would have been truly extraordinary, but for the historical treatment of Columbus and other great explorers into the Unknown. Stanley was not only violently attacked on his return from every expedition, but it was, for instance, insinuated that he had not discovered Livingstone, while some even dared to denounce, as forgeries, the autograph letters brought home from Livingstone to his children, notwithstanding their own assurance to the contrary. The reception produced, therefore, a bitter disappointment, only to be appreciated by the reader when he has completed this survey of Stanley’s splendid personality.”

The volume is covered in red buckram, with the title stamped in gold. Below the title, a central medallion features the outline of Africa with the words BULA-MATARI above. This phrase, which translates as “breaker of rocks,” was given to Stanley during his travels; he later requested that it be inscribed on his headstone. A detailed fold-out map of Central Africa, personally supervised by Stanley, is found inside the back cover.

Stanley achieved international fame in 1871 when he was engaged by the New York Herald to lead an expedition into central Africa to locate the missionary and explorer Dr. David Livingstone, who had not been heard from in several years. When he finally found him on November 10, 1871, Stanley was said to have greeted the doctor with the famous phrase, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?,” although most scholars today agree the words were not spoken at the time, but were fabricated in later accounts of the mission.

Stanley made several more trips to Africa, his last from 1887 to 1889 focusing on the relief of Emin Pasha, the Egyptian governor of Equatoria (now part of modern-day South Sudan). It was this last expedition that served as the focus of his lecture tour in the United States, which brought him to Chicago for two lectures at the Auditorium theater on January 2 and 3, 1891. The newspapers covered every aspect of his visit in detail, from his arrival at the Auditorium hotel on January 1, to the various receptions and entertainments held in his honor, and the content of his talks. He left Chicago on January 5 to lecture in Milwaukee.

Today there is considerable controversy regarding Stanley’s legacy, ranging from his treatment of Africans to his role in the colonization of the continent by European nations including Belgium, for which he helped establish the Congo Free State. The surviving volumes in the Glessner library are a reminder of the fascination he held for many in the last decades of the 19th century, most of whom would only learn about Africa through his writings.

December 2023 - Silver tête-à-tête set by Dominick & Haff

This charming sterling silver coffee service was a wedding gift to Frances Glessner and Blewett Lee in February 1898. The gift came from William Laughlin Glessner, an uncle of Frances, and a younger brother of her father. William was a highly successful steel manufacturer in Wheeling, West Virginia, serving as president of the Laughlin Nail Company, and becoming vice president of the Whitaker-Glessner Company in 1902, when it was formed through merger with the Whitaker Iron Company.  

The three-piece set is an example of a cabaret service, a term used to denote a small tea or coffee set. More specifically, it is known as a tête-à-tête set, as the one pint coffeepot is designed to provide service for two. That term, French for head-to-head, normally refers to a private conversation between two people.

The coffeepot is designed in a butternut squash form. The handle is woven in rattan to make it comfortable to hold, as the heat of the coffee would transfer into the silver handle. The creamer and open sugar bowl are both squat in form, the unusual and exotic shape a subtle reference to Turkish design. All three pieces feature gently curving tendrils extending from the handles and spouts, a typical motif of the Art Nouveau movement. The date stamp on the bottom indicates it was made in 1889, making this a very early example of Art Nouveau. Americans were introduced to the style around that time through French posters and magazine covers designed by the Paris-based Swiss graphic designer Eugene Grasset and others.

The set was made by Dominick & Haff, a leading American silver manufacturer based in New York. Their work is generally considered to be on par with that of Tiffany and Gorham. The firm was established in 1872 by Henry B. Dominick (1847-1928) and Leroy B. Haff (1841-1893), and was formally incorporated in 1889, the year this service was made. Examples of their wares, which often feature cutting-edge design, can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cooper Hewitt. The Art Institute of Chicago possesses a stunning Egyptian Revival centerpiece made about 1880.

Dominick & Haff’s silver was retailed through the finest jewelers and luxury goods purveyors in the United States including Bailey, Banks and Biddle, and C. D. Peacock; the latter is where this set was purchased. Elijah Peacock, an immigrant from Cambridge, England, started the business in Chicago as The House of Peacock in February 1837, one month before the city was incorporated.

In 1889 his son Charles Daniel Peacock took control and changed the name to C. D. Peacock. The establishment was located at the northeast corner of State and Adams in 1898 when this set was purchased. It is best remembered for its long-time location which opened in the Palmer House hotel in June 1927. The store featured three sets of brass peacock doors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany; the doors remain, although Peacock no longer has a store at this location. C. D. Peacock does maintain three locations in the Chicago suburbs, making it the oldest continually operating business in the Chicagoland area.

The coffee service was passed down through Frances Glessner Lee’s son and eldest grandson and was donated to Glessner House earlier this year.

November 2023 - Half-model of Vought SB2U Vindicator

This month’s object honors John Glessner Lee, the Glessners’ first grandchild, who was born 125 years ago, December 5, 1898. Lee had a distinguished career as an aeronautical engineer, being awarded numerous patents, and serving as a consultant to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). During his tenure as a project engineer with the Stout Metal Airplane Division of Ford Motor Company in the mid-1920s, he was one of six men who designed the well-known Ford tri-motor plane. Moving on to the Fairchild Airplane and Motor Company, he helped to develop the type of plane used by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his missions to Antarctica. In 1932, Lee was hired by United Aircraft as a project engineer, eventually rising to the position of director of the research department. He retired in 1964.

It was during his time working in the Chance-Vought Division of United Aircraft that he designed the Navy Scout dive-bomber shown in this half-model, which Lee constructed in the early 1940s. The half-model is constructed of wood and is set into a frame which measures 18-1/2 by 24 inches. The tip of the airplane wing projects a full two inches off the surface. The plane is painted black and silver and is mounted to a wood board painted sky blue. Half-models are commonly made for ships and boats and are often known as half-hull models. Lee’s model is a rare example of an airplane and is different in another important way. Half-hull models are always shown in profile where you see one side of the ship or boat. This provided all the information needed for the ship builder, since the vessels are completely symmetrical. The model shown here depicts the airplane in three-quarter view.

The back side of the piece features a detailed note from Lee, written in 1974 on his home stationery – Old Mountain Road, Farmington, Connecticut. It reads:

“This is a half-model of the Vought SB2U-1 Navy Scout Dive-bomber. I was the principal designer and project engineer on this series of airplanes which carried a pilot and a bomber-gunner and were powered by a Pratt & Whitney 1535 engine of around 800 hp. They were replaced by more powerful types just before World War II. They were used by the Americans, the British, the French, and the Argentines, and a few were flown by the Germans who captured them from the French. A couple saw active service in the defense of Midway Island against the Japanese. I made this model myself about 1942-45. John G. Lee, Dec. 11, 1974”

A second note on the reverse cautioned the possessor not to hold the piece by the wing or it will split, and was written by “Daddy’s Brother,” a fictional character Lee developed. His antics and adventures were recorded on a regular basis in the family newsletter, The Lee News, which Lee wrote for decades.

The SB2U-1 was the first monoplane designed by Vought and was the first monoplane used by the Navy, replacing biplanes on carriers. The body was constructed of a truss design covered in fabric, except for the edges of the wings and the engine cowl which were made of metal. The prototype used a 700hp engine, which was replaced by an 825 hp engine when the model was put into production. The plane featured a forward firing Browning .30-caliber machine gun and a second machine gun in the rear cockpit, mounted to a flexible ring mount. The bomb load could carry a single 1,000 pound bomb or two 500 pound bombs. The first planes were delivered on December 13, 1937, and were placed on the U.S.S. Saratoga.

An upgraded version of the plane, designated the SB2U-3, did see service in the Battle of Midway, which took place June 4-7, 1942. By the end of that year, the remaining SB2Us were sent to various training units in the United States, having been replaced for active service by more powerful planes.

The only surviving example of an SB2U was recovered from Lake Michigan in 1990. It was last flown on June 21, 1943, during a training session conducted by the Naval Air Station at Glenview, Illinois. The plane failed to land properly on the training aircraft carrier Wolverine, hit the deck, and rolled off the starboard bow, sinking to the bottom of Lake Michigan; the pilot was unharmed. The salvaged plane required 20,000 hours of restoration work before being put on exhibit at the National Naval Aviation Museum at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida in 1999.

October 2023 - Three photographs of H. H. Richardson’s office/library

In honor of the 185th anniversary of the birth of architect Henry Hobson Richardson (born on September 29, 1838 in Louisiana), we showcase three photographs of the office/library in his Brookline, Massachusetts home, which he presented to the Glessners in 1885. They were both taken by the beautiful space upon their first visit to Richardson’s home in September of that year, and would have been grateful to have the photographs as a reminder of the room.

In an unpublished manuscription about Richardson that John Glessner prepared in 1914, he wrote:
“Mr. Richardson had his home and office in Brookline, just out of Boston.  His private office was a large and beautiful room, with just enough disorder always to be pleasing, with stacks of fine books, with rare and beautiful objects scattered over shelves and tables, a great fireplace in one end before which, with back against a large table, was a deep and most comfortable lounge or couch.  This was designed in his office especially for him - he was an exceedingly large man - and this generous sort of couch has since come to be know by the trade name of Davenport because A. H. Davenport was the maker.

“In this large room was the largest table I ever saw - 12’ square - so long and so wide that the maid could dust it only by getting on and sweeping the top with a broom.  With the exception of a band of mahogany all round it 18” wide, it was covered with carpeting on which were most lovely articles of vertu, some magnificent great books, and the useful implements of his trade.  At the farther end of this room, where the floor was one step higher than the rest, was a sheltered alcove, making a little room by itself.

“The room had an open timbered ceiling of hard pine and plaster.  The span was long and the timbers correspondingly heavy, consequently there came some rather broad season checks even before the room was finished.  Richardson found workmen on ladders puttying up the check splits.  “The way I yanked them down from there,” he said, “was a caution.”  “God Almighty made those checks,” he said.  “Don’t you dare to fill them up.”  And they didn’t dare."

“This is the room I liked the best.  The walls were lined with deep shelves holding flat large (quartos and folios) architectural works, drawings and sketches.  Small alcoves were on either side of the fireplace, filled with all manner of interesting things.  A small wood fire was always laid in the great fireplace, burning whenever the weather would permit.”

The room was quite new at the time the Glessners visited. Richardson made several additions to his office wing through the years, and his office/library was part of an 1884 expansion that included an adjacent exhibition room. The room measured 25’ x 30’ and was the only part of the wing that was fireproof, being constructed of brick. The alcove referenced above (and seen in the bottom photograph) was originally an open verandah, and had been enclosed in 1885.

The design of Richardson’s office is reflected in Glessner House. Many elements of the room can be seen in the Glessners’ library, including the massive center desk, mid-height bookcases, beamed ceiling, and the sofa facing the fireplace at the end of the desk. The goldleaf ceiling appears in the Glessners’ dining room, and they selected the same Morris & Co. “Peacock and Dragon” portieres for their main hall that can be seen sheltering the alcoves to either side of Richardson’s fireplace.

The office wing, including Richardson’s office/library, was taken down a few years after he died, but the beauty of the space is forever preserved in these photographs and the written descriptions by the Glessners and others who were fortunate enough to experience the room in person.

September 2023 - Pair of lapis lazuli caskets

Glessner House is fortunate to possess two beautifully crafted lapis lazuli caskets that were most likely gifts from John Glessner’s business partner, Benjamin H. Warder. In July 1884, Frances Glessner noted in her journal that Warder had just returned from a nine month trip to Europe, and “he brought us a very beautiful little casket made of lapis lazuli.” Although different in size, the overall form of the two caskets is so similar that it seems very likely they were acquired together.

The term “casket” originally referred to a small box, typically used to store jewelry or other precious items. The word is derived from the French word cassette which means a small case. It was much later that the term casket became synonymous with coffin.

The gilt metalwork on the boxes would suggest they were made in Italy. Each features a beveled cover and a paneled body, raised on four lapis ball feet. The larger box measures 3-1/2 inches in length; the smaller 2-1/4 inches.

Lapis lazuli is a semi-precious stone known for its intense blue color. The metamorphic rock has been mined for more than 9,000 years in the northeast part of Afghanistan, which remain the major source for the stone. There are also large mines in Russia and Chile, and smaller mines in several other countries including the United States. Lapis is the Latin word for stone, and lazulum, based on the Persian word lajevard, means sky or heaven, so the name means “stone of the sky” or “stone of heaven.” The stone was used for the inlaid decoration on the funerary mask of Tutankhamun. During the Middle Ages, lapis was exported to Europe where it was ground into a powder and made into ultramarine, a paint more valuable than gold. Among the artists who used it was Vermeer, and it can be seen in the headwrap of his iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Benjamin H. Warder (1824-1894) was the senior member of the firm of Warder, Bushnell & Glessner, and was almost like a father figure to John Glessner, who was just 20 years old when he started with the firm in 1863. Warder retired from the firm in 1886, the same year he commissioned H. H. Richardson to design a home for him in Washington, D.C. (the rebuilt facade still stands). He died in Cairo, Egypt in 1894 while on vacation and his body was returned to the United States. Interment took place at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C. in a specially commissioned 3,500 pound bronze (above-ground) sarcophagus. It was made by the Gorham Manufacturing Company from a design by the French-American sculptor Philip Martiny in collaboration with architects Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge.

The larger of the two caskets is displayed on the partners desk in the library; the smaller casket is located on the desk in the corner guestroom.

August 2023 - Glass plate negative of Hero Glessner

In honor of National Dog Month, we celebrate Hero Glessner, the smallest member of the family. The Skye Terrier was acquired by the Glessners in 1885 and died in 1892.

The Scottish dog breed originated on the Isle of Skye, the largest and northernmost island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The breed is known for being intelligent, strong-willed, loyal, and a good hunter. In 1840, Queen Victoria began keeping Skye Terriers, both the drop-eared and prick-eared varieties.

An image of Skye Terriers was included in The Illustrated Book of the Dog by Vero Shaw in 1881, and this led to its great popularity and introduction to the United States. An illustration also accompanied the story “Puff and the Baby,” found in Book of Cats and Dogs, and Other Friends, for Little Folks by James Johonnot, published in 1884. Fanny Glessner received a copy of that book (which remains in the library today) less than a year before Hero became part of the family.

The Skye Terrier was recognized as a breed by the American Kennel Club in 1887 (two years AFTER the Glessners acquired Hero; they always seemed to be on the cutting edge of things). It is now among the least known of the terrier breeds and is considered endangered.

George Glessner acquired Hero as he traveled to The Rocks with Isaac Scott in July 1885. He wrote to his mother:
“Hero does not know us yet and when we walk around or knock at the door, he barks or growls. He killed four woodchucks since we came and is now having some fun with a great big blow fly on the window.”

Frances Glessner arrived at The Rocks soon after and wrote:
“The dog needs a whole book to himself – he is so intelligent. He goes on tip toe when on the scent of a woodchuck. He snapped at a chicken when he first came up – and now (since Mr. Scott talked to him about it) he will lie in a coop full of young ones and let them nestle up to him. . . We have given him the blue velvet cushion.”

For Christmas that year, sixteen stockings were hung on the fireplace, and Hero’s contained a new collar with his name and George’s, along with a turkey bone tied up with a bow. Miss Violette Scharff, Fanny’s paid companion, was especially close to Hero, referring to him as her “angel.” She took primary responsibility for his care after George headed off to Harvard in the fall of 1890.

A scary incident took place in November 1891. Frances Glessner and Miss Scharff returned home from the opera late in the evening and were surprised when Hero did not come down to meet them. The house was searched, but he was nowhere to be found. The local watchman was notified, who in turn called the police. The next morning, the coachman, Charles Nelson, and his son Norman, went out early looking for Hero. They met up with a neighboring coachman who reported he heard Hero in the alley about 3:00am and brought him inside. Hero had apparently slipped out the back gate undetected late the night before and had roamed the alley for hours before being found. The coachman received a $5.00 reward (about $167 today).

Miss Scharff asked to take Hero with her when she sailed for Switzerland to visit her family in late April 1892. In a letter sent to Frances Glessner, she noted:
“Hero seems quite at home. Monday evening at supper, we had a large cake, ordered by my sister, on which could be read ‘Hail the conquering Hero comes.’ He is a conquering Hero, every one in town is admiring him.”

Two months later, the Glessners received word of Hero’s final days:
“Thanks to Madame Borel’s influence, all formalities were fulfilled, papers signed and I was allowed to have the little dog put out of pain here in the garden.  I gave out after carrying Hero down and fled to my room.  Daisy waited in the hall, when all was over, she wrapped the body in a cloth, put it in the basket, Mme. Borel sent her carriage for it and I will be shown the grave.  I miss Hero more than words can tell.  I expect every minute to find him again, but I feel I have done him the greatest kindness.  He did not exactly suffer but for the last week or so was perfectly listless, slept all the time in corners, would only eat when fed by hand, did not want to be petted, and only showed any sign of life and pleasure when out walking.  I am glad it is over but oh! I do want him so!”

The image above comes from a glass plate negative taken by George Glessner, one of hundreds he made over the years, in both 4x5 and 8x10 sizes. It shows Hero posed in the conservatory of the house in late 1888.

July 2023 - Brochure from Sauer’s Restaurant

The year 2023 marks the 140th anniversary of the opening of the exclusive Bournique’s Dancing Academy at 311 E. 23rd Street, as well as the 30th anniversary of the demolition of that building, following a period in which it housed Sauer’s Restaurant. The brochure above, recently donated to our archives, dates to about 1990 and was handed out to restaurant patrons who wished to learn more about the illustrious history of the building.

Augustus and Elizabeth Bournique opened their first Chicago dancing academy in 1867. After being burnt out of their State and Randolph location during the Great Fire of 1871, they opened academies on 24th Street and Madison Street. In 1883, they completed their elegant new building on 23rd Street east of Prairie Avenue, placing it immediately south of Chicago’s most exclusive residential district. Architects Burnham and Root designed the three-story Queen Anne style brick building which featured a dancing hall measuring 60 by 85 feet. A balcony above provided a “splendid observation point” and a music platform could accommodate 30 musicians. The decoration of the room included frescoes by S. S. Barry & Son, brass and copper combination gas and electric chandeliers by H. M. Wilmarth & Bro., leaded glass windows by W. H. Wells & Bro., and a remarkable parquet floor comprising 173,000 pieces, the whole bordered in ebony and cherry, provided by W. C. Runyon & Co. of Rochester, New York.

The children of Prairie Avenue all attended classes at Bournique’s, the ritual serving as a rite of passage, and leading to the introduction of many who later became husband and wife. The hall was also rented for large dinners and entertainments, which received extensive attention in the newspapers. Augustus Bournique retired in 1918, at which time his son Alvar took over the academy, relocating it to 1134 N. Dearborn Street. The move was an indicator of the change in the character of the neighborhood, the well-to-do families having abandoned their South Side lair for the North Side Gold Coast.

The Academy building on 23rd Street was stripped of its elegant appointments and converted into a trucking company garage which operated until 1966. The next year, the Sauer brothers opened their restaurant in the building. They sandblasted the exposed interior brick walls, installed a pebble aggregate concrete floor, added skylights between the roof trusses, and covered the front façade in white stucco. A 1970 review of the restaurant in the “Eating Out” column of the Chicago Tribune noted that popular fare ranged from a broiled hamburger on rye bread to a boiled brisket of corned beef with cabbage, each priced at $1.50.

In later years, the restaurant became equally known for its musical entertainment ranging from jazz to the emerging genre of house music, with frequent performances by Frankie Knuckles, today recognized as the “godfather of house music.”

The restaurant closed in 1993 and the contents and equipment were auctioned off, after which the building was demolished. Today, the site of the legendary building sits beneath a parking garage in the McCormick Place West Building.

June 2023 - With the Procession by Henry Blake Fuller

In honor of Pride Month, we showcase Chicago author Henry Blake Fuller (1857-1929), and his 1895 novel With the Procession. The Glessners’ copy was recently returned to the library by a donor who found it in a bookshop. Fuller was important for several reasons, including his early exploration of homosexuality in fiction, for which he was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2000.

Henry Blake Fuller was descended from Dr. Samuel Fuller (1580-1633), a passenger about the Mayflower and the first physician for the Plymouth Colony. Henry’s grandfather, Judge Henry Fuller (1805-1879), came to Chicago in 1849 and found his fortune constructing the Illinois Central Railway, laying the first water pipes in the city, and serving as superintendent of the Chicago City Railway.

As a young boy, Henry was described as a “solitary figure . . . quiet and delicate, preferring the company of his books to the boisterous games of boyhood.” His first published article appeared in the Chicago Tribune during his senior year in high school; he did not attend university.

Fuller’s first novels were styled as travel romances set in Italy. Critics drew similarities between Fuller’s writing and that of Henry James, and East Coast critics, including Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell, “took Fuller’s work as a promising sign of a burgeoning literary culture” in Chicago.

In 1893, Fuller published The Cliff-Dwellers, the first of several novels set in Chicago, the title being a reference to the skyscrapers redefining the city skyline at the time. It was well received by critics but was controversial among Chicago readers who found Fuller’s realistic portrayal of the industrial and multicultural nature of the city rather jarring. With the Procession was published in 1895 and was also based in Chicago. It follows the Marshall family, pioneers in Chicago, and their struggles to keep up “with the procession” of Chicago’s growth and industrialization. The tone of the novel was gentler than The Cliff-Dwellers and it was noted that his treatment of the Marshall family was inspired by his own family history as early settlers of Chicago. A review in The New York Times noted, in part:

“Sooner than we could have thought possible, a man has come to write the human comedy of the United States at the close of the nineteenth century, and we venture to assert that the particular impress of this man’s hand is likely to be a permanent one in American literature.”

In 1919, Fuller self-published Bertram Cope’s Year, after publishers passed on the novel, one of the very first to introduce homosexuality as a prominent theme. The story was set on the campus of Northwestern University. Highly satirical, it received poor reviews from the puzzled critics, and “embarrassed his friends.” It was not Fuller’s first work dealing with homosexuality. In 1896, he published a short play, At Saint Judas’s, about a gay man who commits suicide at the wedding of his former lover; it was the first American play to deal explicitly with the subject.

The Glessners were friends with Fuller, although how they were first introduced is unknown. In 1902, a note from Fuller reads “I shall be glad to take supper with you ‘most informally’ – my decided preference – next Sunday at half past six.” In 1907, John Glessner and Fuller were both charter members of the newly organized club, The Cliff Dwellers, which took its name from his 1893 novel.

Five of his works remain in the Glessner library today; in addition to With the Procession, they include The Chatelaine of La Trinité (1892), The Last Refuge: A Sicilian Romance (1900), Under the Skylights (1901), and On the Stairs (1918).

Fuller died of heart disease in July 1929 at the home of his long-time friend Wakeman T. Ryan in Hyde Park. His obituary noted that he was of “retiring nature” and refused to have his name listed in the telephone directory for fear of his retirement solitude being disrupted. He was interred in the family plot at Oak Woods Cemetery.

May 2023 - Ebonized slipper chair by Herter Brothers

Glessner House is fortunate to possess a set of three ebonized slipper chairs made by the great late-19th century furniture maker, Herter Brothers. Two of the chairs were returned to the house in 1968 by the Glessners’ granddaughter, Martha Lee Batchelder. The third chair, passed down through the son’s side of the family, was returned in August 2022. All were recently reupholstered, using a fabric very similar to the original gold silk damask, which is preserved on a back pillow in the archives.

Chairs such as these were produced by Herter Brothers starting in the mid-1870s, when the firm began to produce pieces influenced by Japanese design, featuring ebonized surfaces meant to imitate Japanese lacquerware. It is likely the Glessners purchased the chairs for their new Prairie Avenue into which they moved in 1887. By that time, Herter Brothers had established a store in Chicago, located in the Pullman Building at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street. The Glessners made their first purchase from Herter Brothers as early as 1876, a letter from their New York office confirming the sale of an armchair covered in red moquette, for which the Glessners paid $90.00 (the equivalent of $2,550 in 2023 dollars).

The firm of Herter Brothers was organized in New York City in 1864 by German immigrant half-brothers Gustave and Christian Herter. It began as a furniture and upholstery shop but quickly expanded to provide complete interiors.

Prominent clients included J. Pierpont Morgan and William Henry Vanderbilt. During the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the White House acquired several pieces including a slipper chair. The firm returned during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt to decorate the State Dining Room and the East Room, from designs by Charles Follen McKim. Chicago clients included the Union League Club, Cyrus McCormick, and George Pullman, who hired the firm to decorate the $100,000 palm house expansion of his Prairie Avenue mansion in 1892.

The firm closed in 1906. Christian’s son, Albert, started Herter Looms in 1909, to produce tapestries and textiles; it was basically the successor firm to Herter Brothers. The Glessners were good friends with Albert and his wife Adele.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted a major exhibition “Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age” in 1995. Their collection includes an ebonized slipper chair identical to those found at Glessner House.

The piece is known as a slipper chair due to its construction with a low seat that was two to three inches lower than a typical chair. The form was originally designed for the bedroom to make it easier for the heavily dressed and corseted woman of the late 19th century to be able to put on her shoes (slippers). It was an invention of the Victorian era and was designed in multiple styles ranging from Renaissance Revival to Eastlake. Our chairs, with their dark polished stain meant to imitate ebony, are a product of the Aesthetic Movement, popular in Britain and the United States from about 1875 to 1885, with its focus on the creation of art simply to be beautiful, best expressed in the mantra “art for art’s sake.”

Today, the set of three chairs with their beautiful new upholstery, add an artistic flair to the Glessners’ parlor, just as they did a century ago.

April 2023 - Wedgwood Bough Pot

This elegant earthenware vessel is an excellent example of a bough pot produced in England by Wedgwood in the latter half of the 19th century. The starkly modern design of the pot is reminiscent of other pieces acquired by Frances Glessner at the same time, showing her interest in simple line and form in lieu of elaborate decoration.

The firm of Wedgwood, long considered one of the premier manufacturers of English fine china, porcelain, and earthenware, was started in 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood. He had spent several years in partnership with Thomas Whieldon, the leading potter of the day, but was encouraged to start his own business after developing a new green glaze. Within a few years he developed his own version of creamware, a fine glazed earthenware with a creamy color that became known as “Queen’s Ware” after he presented Queen Charlotte with a creamware tea set for twelve. By 1780, Wedgwood had developed pearlware, which was whiter in appearance with a hint of blue.

He became best known for his unglazed stoneware, first produced in 1774, which he called Jasperware. The most common version featured a blue body with white relief work, the blue color coming to be known as Wedgwood blue. The firm remained in the Wedgwood family well into the 20th century and merged with Waterford Crystal in 1987; it is now part of the Finnish company Fiskars.

The bough pot, an example of pearlware, stands nine inches in height with the mouth measuring nearly six inches in diameter. It is topped with a removable pierced cover containing holes as large as 1-1/4 inches in diameter for holding branches and flowers. The only decoration on the pot is a series of horizontal bands highlighted in a vibrant green glaze, the color varying within the bands due to their ridged surface. It is interesting to note that pearlware pieces were only decorated in blue, yellow, and green as other colors could not withstand the heat necessary to fire the glaze on pearlware.

Bough pots became popular in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries to decorate interiors. They were often used to adorn fireplaces during the summer months, the large branches concealing the unused firebox. The pierced cover of the pot is also referred to as a flower frog – the term denoting a piece in which holes are used as guides for stems that could be inserted for arranging.

The pot is displayed on the west bookcase in the library in the same spot in which it can be seen in a 1923 image of the room. John Glessner specifically noted the piece in a paper he prepared for the Monday Morning Reading Class, indicating its prominence among the Glessners’ large collection of ceramics. The Glessners also owned the two volume set, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood by Eliza Meteyard, published in the 1860s and considered the definitive history of the man and his firm.

March 2023 - Harvard Associates in Police Science certificate awarded to Frances Glessner Lee

As part of Frances Glessner Lee’s work with the Department of Legal Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, she initiated biannual seminars in homicide investigation for state police. The first seminar took place in November 1945, bringing together state police officers from around the country, who had been nominated by their respective departments to attend the intensive training. Completion of the three day seminar conferred the status of “Harvard Associate in Police Science” upon the attendee. That designation could be used as a credential in a court of law. Additionally, the Associates would gather at conventions to continue their study of death scene investigation and would often confer on difficult cases.

Frances Glessner Lee not only organized the seminars, she also participated as an attendee at the first seminar, which she was able to do as a result of her having been appointed a Police Captain by the State of New Hampshire two years earlier. This participation resulted in her presenting herself with this certificate, which designates Lee as a charter member of the Associates. The certificate was signed by Lee, who served as President of the Associates, as well as Dr. Alan R. Moritz, chair of the Department of Legal Medicine. The third signature is that of Harrie C. Gill, who Lee appointed as the first Secretary-Treasurer of the Associates. Gill was an officer with the Rhode Island State Police and a nationally recognized expert on polygraph tests. During World War II, Gill used his skills to screen personnel for the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear bomb.

The discovery of the framed certificate in April 2015 is an interesting story. The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests was in the process of purchasing Lee’s cottage at The Rocks. They asked Bill Tyre and John Waters of Glessner House to document the structure. During that process, Tyre and Waters stumbled upon a large suitcase in the attic of the cottage, bearing the initials F.G.L. Upon opening the suitcase, they discovered this framed certificate, along with several others designating Lee as a police captain in various states, plus other awards and documents relating to her years working with the Department of Legal Medicine. The suitcase and its contents were donated to Glessner House by the North Country Council, owners of the cottage at the time.

February 2023 - Zsolnay covered dish

This striking covered dish, which measures just 5-1/2 inches in height, is an excellent example of the work of the Zsolnay porcelain factory in Pécs, Hungary. It displays one of Zsolnay’s best known features – the beautiful iridescent finish, which is reminiscent of the work of English ceramicist William De Morgan, well represented at Glessner House.

The factory was established in 1853 by Miklós Zsolnay (1800-1880) to produce a variety of stoneware and ceramics. A decade later, his son Vilmos joined the company and led the efforts to make their wares known internationally, receiving awards at the World’s Fairs in Vienna (1873) and Paris (1878). During the 1880s, the firm began producing “pyrogranite,” a type of durable glazed ceramic that was used as roof tiles and outdoor decoration (click here to see the roof of the Post Office Palace in Pécs). Zsolnay was the largest company in Austro-Hungary by the early 1910s, but the World War, followed by Serbian occupation led to its decline. It recovered in the 1930s, but World War II saw the bombing of its factory, followed by Communist rule. It was not until 1982 that the company regained its independence. The firm still makes high quality pieces and the Zsolnay Museum in Pécs, located in the former Zsolnay home, displays many of its finest pieces.

The Glessners’ covered dish, which dates to the early 1900s, is in the form of a large egg set on end. The horizontal ribbing is an important part of the surface as the glaze, which appears to be iridescent metallic, changes colors with the angle of reflection. The main band of decoration comprises five pairs of cream-colored chickens surrounded by scrolling foliate work. Above and below, deep blue decorative motifs set against a silver stippled background cover the entire surface. The inside of the dish is covered in a luminous silver finish, similar to mercury glass. It is highly reflective and could easily be mistaken for metal. The base features the traditional Zsolnay mark which incorporates the towers from the Pécs Cathedral.

The iridescence is the result of a process known as eosin, introduced at Zsolnay in 1893. The term comes from the Greek word “eos” which refers to the light red color seen at dawn. Multiple eosin colors were developed over time, and they became popular with artisans during the Art Nouveau movement.

The covered dish is displayed on the mantel shelf in the corner guestroom. It is a reminder of the Glessners’ discriminating taste, and their appreciation for ceramics employing new and innovative techniques in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

January 2023 - Plaster model of Glessner House by the WPA

The 1930s was a time of significant recognition for Glessner House. The house was featured in two of the earliest architecture exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1932 and 1936), and the related catalog for the latter, by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr., was the first in-depth examination of architect Henry Hobson Richardson’s work in half a century.

This plaster model was created about 1939 by the Museum Extension Project (MEP) of the Pennsylvania Works Progress Administration (WPA).  The goals of the MEP were two-fold. First, to produce visual materials for students across the state that would help them to better understand subjects ranging from architecture and design to maps and Native American crafts. Second, to provide employment to as many as 1,200 people at a time in its three divisions to produce the works, create children’s museums, and to assist in conservation work at museums around the state.

The plaster model of Glessner House was one of more than a hundred works of architecture that were each made to various scales. The house itself (exclusive of the base) measures approximately nine by twenty inches, indicating a scale of eight feet to one inch. Multiple copies would have been made of each model, and a school could order up to fifteen models at a time. The significance of Glessner House is confirmed by the fact that many of the models were of buildings in general – a Gothic country house or a modern town house – whereas Glessner House obviously depicts a specific building within the “Late American” category. The model would have been created from Richardson’s working plans, as evidenced by features shown that were later changed in the final design. The label reads, “Richardsonian Romanesque, 1885, Glessner House, Chicago.”

The model was acquired by Glessner House in 2007 and helps visitors understand the importance and recognition of the house nearly ninety years ago. Additionally, it affords an easy way to provide an aerial view of the all-important plan of the house and its site, and serves as a tangible reminder of the Great Depression and the enormous body of work produced by the WPA during that time.

For further information on the model and the MEP, read our blog article from March 2015.

December 2022 - Sterling sauce ladle presented by the servants, 1895

On December 7, 1895, John and Frances Glessner celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Before heading to the symphony to hear a concert specifically programmed for them by music director Theodore Thomas, the Glessners and their two children enjoyed a quiet dinner at home. Frances Glessner recalled the following in her journal:

“At dinner I gave John a loving cup with twenty five bridesmaid roses in it. After a little while George brought me a beautiful silver water pitcher from him and Frances - then in a few minutes Frederick came and in a very graceful way asked me to accept two beautiful gravy ladles from the servants. With the spoons came a card “with the best wishes of the servants” followed by their names arranged according to the length of time they have been with us. These gifts were all in the most perfect taste and touched us deeply. After dinner, John called them in and thanked them for us both.”

One of the two sauce ladles (shown above) remains in the house collection. The sterling silver ladle was made by Gorham and retailed through Spaulding & Co. in Chicago. Gorham was one of the largest and most prominent American manufacturers of sterling and silverplate, and had been founded in Providence, Rhode Island in 1831. Henry A. Spaulding opened Spaulding & Co. in Chicago in 1889 after serving as the general representative in Europe for Tiffany & Co. for eighteen years. Located at the corner of State and Jackson, the store was a favorite of Frances Glessner.

The ladle, in the Newcastle pattern, features a long curving handle with the JFG monogram at top and delicate beading along the edge on both the front and back. The deep, scalloped bowl is gilt on the inside. What is most special about the piece, however, is the back of the bowl. Frances Glessner was so touched by the gift that she brought it to Spaulding & Co. and had the message from the card engraved on the back:
”The best wishes of the servants
Charles Nelson Frederick Reynolds
John Flear Antonie Gersting
Mattie Williamson Annie Munro”
To this, at the bottom, she added “1870 Dec 7th 1895” noting the dates of her wedding and her 25th anniversary.

Charles Nelson was the coachman and had been with the family since 1878. Frederick Reynolds joined the staff as butler in 1891. John Flear had served as footman for three years; in 1923 he returned as butler. Antonie Gersting was the ladies maid, Mattie Williamson was the cook, and Annie Munro was a maid; all had been with the family just a few years. Mattie would become one of the longest serving members of the household, remaining for twenty years until her marriage in 1912.

Frances Glessner’s thoughtful addition of the sentiment from the card (shown at upper left above) to the back of the ladle ensured that the story of its presentation to the Glessners on their anniversary would always be preserved.

November 2022 - Signed portrait of Frederick A. Stock

The Glessners received this large portrait of their good friend, Frederick A. Stock, as a Christmas gift in 1907. It is inscribed “To my best friends Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Glessner with all good wishes” followed by his distinctive signature, and a five measure musical quote to the left. The portrait was taken by Richard Gordon Matzene, Chicago’s premiere society photographer during the first decade of the 20th century.

The Glessners offered their friendship and unconditional support to Stock throughout his long tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1905 until his death in 1942, the longest in the history of the orchestra. When Stock was officially appointed as music director, a few months after the death of Theodore Thomas, the Glessners hosted a dinner for the principals of the orchestra, during which John Glessner gave a toast that included these words:
”Now the Board has chosen a leader. Under him we hope to see our orchestra work grow better and better. I know he will do the best that is in him . . . I toast the rising star, Frederick Stock.”

On December 31, 1909, Stock premiered his first symphony, significant portions of which were composed during his stay with the Glessners at their summer estate, The Rocks, in New Hampshire. He dedicated the symphony to the Glessners, although the official program notes never mentioned them specifically by name. The dedication read, in part:
”This symphony was written in honor of two well-beloved people, man and woman, who have won for themselves the highest esteem and loyal friendship of many of the most worthy dwellers in the land . . . To these two people, whom the composer is privileged to number among his best and dearest friends, his symphony is most affectionately dedicated.”

The Glessners’ devoted support of their friend became especially meaningful in 1918, after the United States entered World War I. Stock had never completed his naturalization papers, and was therefore still a German citizen, in spite of having resided in Chicago since 1895. Anti-German sentiment was pressuring the Orchestral Association to remove Stock and other members who were German citizens. In July 1918, John Glessner wrote a letter to President Woodrow Wilson “expressing implicit confidence in (Stock’s) loyalty to the United States.” When Stock was forced to resign later that year, John Glessner expressed his desire to resign from the Board of Trustees, in order to stand with his friend. When Stock returned to the podium for his first concert after being reinstated in February 1919, he was celebrated that evening with a dinner at the Glessners’ home.

Frances Glessner died in October 1932, and Stock quickly inserted Bach’s Chorale-Prelude into the program. It was the first time the orchestra performed a piece in memory of a woman. When John Glessner died in January 1936, Stock programmed two pieces in his memory - Strauss’s tone poem, Death and Transfiguration for the Tuesday concert, and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony at the regular Thursday evening concert.

The signed portrait serves as a tangible reminder of the precious friendship between Frederick Stock and the Glessners over a period of thirty years, manifested by countless dinners and entertainments that took place within the walls of 1800 South Prairie Avenue.

October 2022 - George Glessner’s pocket watch

This pocket watch was presented to George Glessner by his parents exactly 130 years ago, in honor of his 21st birthday. After his death in 1929, it was given to his son, John J. Glessner II, and it was passed down through his branch of the family, with George’s great-grandson, Oliver F. Wadsworth III, donating it to Glessner House in March 2022.

Frances Glessner recorded in her journal the celebration of George’s 21st birthday at their summer estate, The Rocks. Although his actual birthday was October 2, 1892, the family celebrated one week early, as George returned to Harvard a few days later.

“Today we are celebrating George’s coming of age. We had a beautiful gold watch (and chain) for him which Mr. Avery had made for him especially. Frederick and Mattie made him a lovely big cake which they ornamented. They had a little pyramid of pink and white in the middle and a little ladder on each side. Then Happy Birthday on it in red letters – 1871-1892 – J.G.M.G. We had twenty one candles burning.”

(Note: Frederick Reynolds was the butler and Mattie Williamson was the cook).

Mr. Avery was Thomas M. Avery, president of the Elgin National Watch Company. The Glessner and Avery families became close when they owned adjacent houses on Washington Street, the two properties taking up the full block on the north side between Sangamon and Morgan streets. Avery moved to 2123 S. Prairie Avenue in 1888, just months after the Glessners moved into their home at 1800.

The National Watch Company was organized in Chicago during the Civil War and completed its plant in Elgin, located west of Chicago, by 1867. The name Elgin became synonymous with the watches being produced there, so the company name was changed to the Elgin National Watch Company in 1874, around the time Avery was appointed president. Under his leadership, the company became the largest producer of watches in the world, producing about 500,000 per year by the late 1880s. He retired in 1899 and died two years later. The company survived until the 1960s at which time the plant was demolished.

The case of the watch is 18 karat gold and is inscribed “John George Macbeth Glessner, October 2, 1892” in elaborate script. The serial number, 3845058, indicates it was produced in 1889. It is a very high quality watch, so would have been made and then held for a discriminating buyer; thus the journal reference to Avery personally selecting it.

The movement is made of nickel, which became the premium in the late 1800s, replacing gilt movements in top-of-the-line watches. Nickel was more durable than gilded plates and offered a better surface for decorative machining and engraving. The movement of this watch displays damaskeening, a decorative patterning composed of very fine scratches made by a rose engine lathe using disks and polishing wheels. The fine patterns are similar to the results of Guilloché engraving.

The watch is open face, with the stem in the traditional 12:00 position, and the seconds bit, the small dial containing the second hand, at the 6:00 position. It features a convertible movement, meaning it could be modified so that the stem placement would be in the 3:00 position, which was typical for hunting watches.

We are pleased to have the watch back in the house for visitors to enjoy, after being cared for by four generations of the Glessner family. It is displayed in a dome on the mantel in George’s bedroom.

September 2022 - Fighter Facts and Fallacies by John Glessner Lee

In the fall of 1942, less than a year after the United States entered World War II, John Glessner Lee, the Glessners’ eldest grandson, authored Fighter Facts and Fallacies. It was published by William Morrow and Company and sold for $1.25.  As noted on the dust jacket, the purpose was:
“to acquaint the general reader with the fundamentals of fighter design as the engineer sees them; to help him understand the problems facing both engineers and military men; and to provide for engineers, Army and Navy pilots and pre-flight students a concise, fully illustrated guide that tells the basic things they should know about their airplanes.”  

The copy in the Glessner House collection is inscribed to his sister Martha with the postscript, “You don’t have to read it!”

Lee was born in Chicago in 1898 and received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early 1920s. After teaching aeronautical engineering at MIT, he served as project engineer with the Ford Motor Co. where he helped design the Ford tri-motor plane. In 1932 he joined United Aircraft Corporation (later United Technologies and now Raytheon Technologies), where he was appointed assistant director of research in 1939 and research director in 1955. He retired from the company in 1964, later publishing It Should Fly Wednesday: Recollections of an Airplane Designer. He died in 1988.

The Introduction to the book was written by Jerome C. Hunsaker (1886-1984), one of America’s most distinguished aeronautical engineers and the founder of the aerodynamics curriculum and research program at MIT in 1914. In that same year, after working with Gustav Eiffel outside Paris, he designed the first wind tunnel in the U.S. (at MIT). By the time he wrote the Introduction in September, 1942, he was serving as Chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Of the book and its author, Hunsaker wrote:

“Fighter Facts and Fallacies by John Lee comes at a time when it is most needed. Many of us are confused and discouraged by statements of self-styled experts, in the press and over the radio, as to the relative merits of various German, Jap, or British fighters and our own. . . Mr. Lee’s discussion of the effects on performance of power, wing area, weight, and streamlining indicates how a designer thinks in juggling with his fundamental limitations. It also suggests what research men should be doing to lift some of these limitations. . . I am glad Mr. Lee has undertaken to explain in his clear and concise way the fundamentals of airplane performance. He is the most competent man I know to do this.”

After an explanatory preface, Lee divided his text into six chapters examining the effects of wing loading, power loading, weight increase, streamlining, span loading, and propellers. In the summary, he noted that “there is no ‘best’ fighter plane” and that circumstances will always determine the specific need. This is supported by two pages of clearly laid out factors affecting the performance of a typical fighter plane.  

The text was accompanied by 54 illustrations created by Beverley Hancock (1903-1991), a talented commercial artist. Born in Chicago, Hancock received his degree in commercial illustration and design from the Pratt Institute in New York. He enjoyed a successful career as an advertising artist, occasionally been engaged by governmental agencies such as the U.S. Naval Observatory, for which he recorded the 1929 total eclipse of the sun. Hancock was a long time resident of Connecticut, and was a charter member of the Connecticut Association of Professional Artists when it was organized in 1948.

The book was reviewed in the December 1942 issue of U.S. Air Services, the reviewer, Esther H. Forbes, noting:

“In the midst of numerous contradictory opinions about the relative merits of American and foreign planes, a top-notch engineer has presented the average man with criteria by which he can judge the planes himself. In Fighter Facts and Fallacies John G. Lee, Assistant Director of Research at the United Aircraft Corporation, analyzes clearly and concisely – for airman and layman alike – the fundamentals of aerodynamics, the compromises which must be considered in fighter planes, and the problems of the designer in improving the performance of fighters.”

Forbes also noted the significance of Hancock’s illustrations:

“Perhaps the most intriguing feature of this book is the series of illustrations by Beverley Hancock. On page after page the author’s lucid text is dramatized in some of the most brilliant and original paintings and sketches to ever be published in the 39 years of heavier-than-air flight. Obviously author and artist have collaborated in complete harmony.”

Fighter Facts and Fallacies became a standard reference for professionals and the general public and was included in the first book list of the Technical Publications for Army Air Forces Field Technical Libraries, issued in December 1943. It is even included in the bibliography for the Wikipedia entry for “fighter aircraft.” Eighty years after its publication, it is a reminder of John Glessner Lee’s mastery of aeronautical engineering  and his desire to provide essential information on fighter planes to U.S. citizens during World War II.

August 2022 - List of Private Libraries I: United States and Canada

In 1897, exactly 125 years ago, George Hadeler of Leipzig, Germany published the first of three volumes enumerating significant private libraries. Volume I included libraries in the United States and Canada; later volumes focused on the United Kingdom and Germany. The book was printed in English, German, and French and featured a half binding of grained cloth and marbled paper. Somewhat unusual is the pagination, with every other leaf left blank. Numerous advertisements for European book dealers in the front and back of the book indicate the volume had a wide distribution there.

It is not known exactly how the listing was compiled, although one could assume the publisher worked with prominent book dealers to gather a list of clients. Additionally, one could submit information on their own library directly to Hadeler, as noted in this 1900 article about the publication of the second volume and a supplement to the first:

“Those possessors of libraries, with whom Mr. Hadeler has been unable to communicate, are requested to furnish him with details as to the extent and character of their libraries if they contain more than 3,000 volumes or have a special character. By doing so, they will, of course, not incur any expense or obligation.”

John Glessner was a serious book collector and his library of 5,000 volumes is included in Volume I, his entry reading:

“A valuable library with many Editions de Luxe of current publications, some of them autograph copies, gifts from the author, etc. A number of books, with which Rich. Grant worked.”

The library continued to grow, with Glessner’s 1936 estate inventory listing nearly 8,000 books in his libraries in Chicago and at his summer estate in New Hampshire. A number of books reflect his interest in book collecting, and a few, such as Private Libraries of Providence and Four Private Libraries of New York, show his specific interest in the contents of privately-owned libraries. 

The reference in his listing to “Rich. Grant” is, in fact, a reference to Richard Grant White (1822-1885), one of the most important American literary critics of his day (and the father of architect Stanford White). In December 1885, Frances Glessner noted in her journal that they made visits to their favorite Chicago bookseller, Jansen, McClurg & Co., to inspect and purchase volumes from White’s library. White was an internationally recognized scholar on the work of William Shakespeare, so the Glessners would no doubt have been incredibly pleased with their purchase of White’s 21-volume set of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, published in 1821 (currently displayed in the second floor “Scott” bookcase).

A total of 44 Chicago libraries are listed in Volume I, including those of a number of the Glessners’ neighbors:
·         Rt. Rev. Charles E. Cheney, 2409 Michigan Avenue (3,500 volumes, mostly historical works and theology)
·         James W. Ellsworth, 1820 Michigan Avenue (5,000 volumes, including a copy of the Gutenberg Bible valued at $14,500)
·         Edson Keith, Jr., 2110 Prairie Avenue (4,000 volumes, plus 125 manuscripts)
·         Dr. Reuben Ludlam, 1823 Michigan Avenue (5,000 volumes, mostly medical)
·         Erskine M. Phelps, 1703 Indiana Avenue (3,000 volumes, including a valuable Napoleonic collection which was donated to the University of Chicago after his death)
·         George M. Pullman, 1729 Prairie Avenue (3,000 volumes, including many on the fine arts)

Additional listings include Theodore Thomas, conductor of the Chicago Orchestra, with his “important musical library, including the orchestra scores of the great masters almost compete and nearly everything of any value.” One of the more unusual entries is for attorney W. Fred Poole, who inherited the library assembled by his father William F. Poole (librarian of the Newberry Library); it included a large collection on witchcraft.

List of Private Libraries I – United States and Canada continues to reside on a shelf in the library, amongst nearly 3,000 of the Glessners’ original books, returned to the house over the years by their descendants.

July 2022 - Silk top hat by Dunlap & Co.

The top hat had its origins in the 1780s, replacing the tricorne and bicorne hats we associate today with the Colonial era. The tall, flat-crowned hat soon became associated with formal wear in Western culture, and Prince Albert’s adoption of the hat assured its popularity and respectability. Top hats were originally made of beaver fur, but by the mid-19th century were all being made of silk plush. The height of the hats varied over the years; think President Lincoln’s “stovepipe” hat for its tallest iteration. John Glessner’s hat is seven inches in height, standard for the 1890s when it was made and worn.

The hat is made from what is known as hatters’ plush, a soft silk weave with a long defined nap that is brushed to achieve its trademark sheen. Construction of the hat begins by blocking a single piece of wool or fur felt on a wood top hat block, made of several pieces so it can be easily removed from the shell. Gossamer is also used for the shell, consisting of cheesecloth coated with shellac and ammonia. The shell cures for several months before it is removed from the block, at which point the brim is attached and the whole is coated with a shellac varnish. Once the silk plush for the side is cut to shape, it is sewn to the top and carefully eased over the shell. The entire hat is then ironed, which melts the shellac causing the plush to adhere to it. The underside of the brim is covered with merino cloth, after which the brim is curled and bound with silk grosgrain ribbon, the same material used for the hat band and bow. The last step involves stitching in the silk lining and leather sweatband.

The hat was made by Dunlap & Co., the nation’s leading manufacturer of silk hats. Robert Dunlap founded the firm in 1857 in New York, after he was denied a raise by his prior employer, Knox Hats. Dunlap quickly became the most popular hatter in New York, and at its peak, the company employed more than 1,000 individuals in its three manufacturing facilities, which specialized in silk, straw, and felt hats. Dunlap opened a branch store in Chicago’s Palmer House in the early 1880s; it was in this store, on the State Street side of the hotel, that John Glessner purchased his hat. Of the store, an 1885 article noted, “The store is the most elegantly appointed establishment for the sale of hats in the Western Metropolis, and is compact in form and finished in the highest style of art.” Another branch was opened in Philadelphia soon after, with the company utilizing authorized agents in other major U.S. cities.

The hat box label, has a penciled notation in Frances Glessner’s writing which reads “Mr. Glessner’s silk hat,” no doubt intended for the butler or footman who would have cared for his clothes. The top hat is displayed on the chest of drawers in his dressing room. The hat box is in poor condition and lacks its lid, so it is kept in collections storage.

June 2022 - Garrick Theatre program, February 1916

This program from the Garrick Theatre for the week beginning Sunday, February 6, 1916, is notable for the advertisement shown above from the Gatlin Institute on Prairie Avenue. Originally known as the Schiller, the Garrick building was completed in 1891 at 64 W. Randolph Street and housed a 1,300-seat theatre. One of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the time, it was considered a masterpiece of Adler & Sullivan and was the focus of an intense but ultimately unsuccessful preservation battle that culminated with its demolition in 1961. Several of those who came together to try and save the Garrick, united again a few years later to save Glessner house.

The advertisement shows the former mansion of Marshall Field, Jr., located at 1919 S. Prairie Avenue, just a little over one block south of Glessner House. Originally constructed in 1883 for William Murray from designs by Solon S. Beman, it was acquired by Field Jr. and significantly enlarged by D. H. Burnham & Co. in 1902. Field only enjoyed the house for a few years before his untimely death in 1905. His widow and three children moved to England, and the house was sold to Dr. Milton Pine, who opened his Gatlin Institute for the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction in 1909. Chicago lacked a zoning ordinance prior to 1923, so the conversion of the residence into a treatment facility took place without issue. Its transformation was among the early signs that Prairie Avenue was going into decline.

The program cover features artwork by Albert Hencke (1865-1936) regarded as one of the great American book illustrators at the turn of the century. It is an illustration he created for the satirical magazine Judge in 1913, and is an excellent example of the fashionable women he often depicted which influenced fashion trends of the era.

The musical comedy “Experience” was playing at the Garrick that week, the work of prolific Canadian-American humorist George V. Hobart (1867-1926). It is noted in the program that “Experience” had just finished a nine month run in New York and a four month run in Boston.

The program contains a few other advertisements of interest. On the same page as the Gatlin Institute can be found ads for Hung Fong Lo Co. and Joy Yen Lo Co., both located in the original Chinatown centered around Clark and Van Buren. Lucile Ltd., a fashionable dressmaker of the era, was operating out of the former Franklin MacVeagh mansion at 1400 N. Lake Shore Drive (the only other house in Chicago designed by H. H. Richardson).

The Lexington Hotel at Michigan Avenue and 22nd Street advertised rooms with private bath for $10.00 per week and three room suites for $25.00 per week. The Chicago Theatre (precursor to the current theatre of the same name), located in the former American Music Hall at Wabash Avenue and Eighth Street, advertised the popular French-born stage actor Ralph Herz in the comedy “Ruggles of Red Gap” by Harrison Rhodes.

The well-established “Motor Row” along South Michigan Avenue was represented with advertisements for the Chalmers Motor Co. at 23rd and Michigan, a Hudson dealership managed by Louis Geyler at 2500 S. Michigan Avenue, and a Scripps-Booth dealership managed by Harry Newman, also at 25th and Michigan.

A name still remembered by many today is Colosimo’s, advertised as “The Finest Italian Restaurant in Chicago” with special table d’hote dinner service for 60 cents, or 75 cents with wine. The restaurant, located in the Harmon Hotel at 2128 S. Wabash Avenue in the former Levee district, was operated by “Big Jim” Colosimo (1877-1920), a street inspector, gambling boss, and operator of brothels who made his way in Chicago by befriending Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and John “Bathhouse” Coughlin. The restaurant became well known nationally and featured elaborate performances with showgirls and a talented orchestra that appeared on a new rising stage. It was at the restaurant that Colosimo met his end in a mob-style execution on May 12, 1920.

May 2022 - The Mother’s Guide for the Care of Her Children

In honor of Mother’s Day (a U.S. holiday since 1914), we present a book from the Glessners’ library entitled The Mother’s Guide for the Care of Her Children. The book was originally published in the U.K. in 1840 by Dr. Andrew Combe as Treatise on the Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy. Our copy is the 1872 American edition, revised and edited by Sir James Clark.

Andrew Combe (1797-1847) was a Scottish physician, and a strong advocate of phrenology, which studied the shape and size of the cranium as a way to determine character and mental abilities. He established the Phrenological Journal in 1823 and four years later, was elected president of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. In 1836, he was appointed physician to King Leopold I of Belgium, resigning the post soon after due to ill health. Two years later, he was appointed a physician to Queen Victoria. In 1840, he published his book on infancy, which he considered to be the best of all of his writings. It was in its sixth edition by the time of his death in 1847.

Sir James Clark, 1st Baronet (1788-1870) was also a Scottish physician and prolific author. After graduating with his MD in 1817, he traveled to France and Switzerland with a man suffering from tuberculosis, noting how the changes in climate impacted the disease. Moving to Rome in 1819, he established his medical practice there and took on the poet John Keats as a patient. Three years later, he published the results of his research on tuberculosis, Medical Notes on Climate, Diseases, Hospitals, and Medical Schools in France, Italy, and Switzerland, comprising an Inquiry into the Effects of a Residence in the South of Europe in Cases of Pulmonary Consumption. He returned to London in 1826 and three years later published his “best and most important work,” expanding on his ideas of climate and its impact on chronic diseases. In 1834, he became the court physician to the Duchess of Kent and her daughter, Princess Victoria. Six months after Victoria ascended the throne, he was appointed the Queen’s Physician-in-Ordinary; in 1840 he was appointed physician to Prince Albert, and “he gradually became most unwittingly a power in the State.” He served as the Queen’s physician for 23 years.

Frances Glessner would have acquired the book between May 1875 and May 1878, based on the bookseller’s label on the inside back cover. The label reads, “From Hadley Bros. & Co., 63 and 65 Washington St.” The shop moved to that location in May 1875 (the address today would be 22 W. Washington St., part of “Block 37”), and just three years later filed for bankruptcy. Given that her daughter Fanny was born in March 1878, it appears likely the book was purchased in anticipation of her arrival. The book purchase may represent Frances Glessner being especially cautious, as her previous child, a son John Francis, had died at the age of eight months in June 1875.

(Note: The bookseller’s label is a vibrant and potentially toxic emerald green, the color of wallpaper, bookcloth, and other materials identified as containing copper arsenite, more commonly known as arsenic.)

The book was very popular in the U.K. but was virtually unknown in the United States prior to the 1872 edition. The purpose of the book was eloquently stated to be “a complete guide for the mother from the moment she has the first consciousness that she is about to have an immortal soul committed to her keeping, until the child is old enough to be considered beyond the reach of the ills of early childhood.” Sixteen chapters include the following topics:

• Influence of the constitution of parents on the health of their children;

• Influence of the mother’s mode of living during pregnancy on the health of the child;

• Great mortality in infancy produced by removable causes, and increased by parental ignorance;

• Choice and regimen of a nurse;

• Artificial nursing;

• The nursery, and conditions required in it; and

• Moral education in infancy and childhood.

An Appendix includes additional information ranging from “The mother’s preparation for her confinement” to “bathing,” and “composition of human milk compared with that of some of the lower animals” to “results of marriages of consanguinity.” In the latter article, regarding the marriage of first cousins, the author notes that “the baneful effects are nowhere more strikingly seen than in the deteriorated offspring of some of the royal and aristocratic families of Europe, in which frequent intermarriages have taken place without regard to the morbid predisposition on either side.”

April 2022 - “Unpapered Bedroom” Nutshell Study

On March 25, 2022, more than 80 people gathered at Glessner House to celebrate the 144th anniversary of the birth of Frances Glessner Lee, the “mother of forensic science,” and to witness the unveiling of an accurate replica of “Unpapered Bedroom,” one of her famous Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. The meticulous recreation is the work of talented miniaturist Drew Munao, who generously offered to make and donate the model. It is on permanent display in the schoolroom.

Frances Glessner Lee developed the idea of the Nutshells in the early 1940s, to provide a way for police officers to hone their skills in visual observation during the biannual Seminars in Homicide Investigation which she sponsored at Harvard Medical School. She hired a full-time carpenter, Ralph Mosher (and later his son Alton), to build the rooms and furniture, while she focused on the myriad inch-to-the-foot objects found throughout the rooms. Lee fully dressed the corpses (including underclothes), burned tiny cigarettes for the ashtrays, knit stockings and accessories with needles the size of straight pins, and wrote on letters and envelopes with a “pen” the width of a hair. She was also careful to accurately represent blood stains, bullet wounds, and the discoloration on the body.

Lee made a total of 19 Nutshells for Harvard, which were named after the police saying, “convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a Nutshell.” All contain at least one corpse who may have met their end through natural causes, an accident, suicide, or murder. After Harvard closed the Department of Legal Medicine in the late 1960s, the models were transferred to the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore, Maryland, where they are still used for training during the now renamed Frances Glessner Lee Seminars in Homicide Investigation.

“Unpapered Bedroom,” Lee’s 18th case, was reported to the “Nutshell Laboratories” on June 4, 1949, and involves the discovery of a deceased female in a rooming house, who had, two days earlier, checked in with her husband as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. A brief statement from Bessie Collins, the landlady, was provided to police during the training; this was the only additional information they received beyond what they observed in the Nutshell. Police were tasked with how to confirm the identity of the woman and analyzing clues to determine the course of the investigation.

Our replica is the work of Drew Munao, a former actor, who utilized his interest in carpentry and antique restoration to craft the meticulous 1:12 scale model. Munao spent months on the project, studying countless detailed photos of the original, including the tiny objects in the wastebasket and on the vanity (not visible in the photo above) – cigarette packs, matches, orange peels, cosmetic containers, and a pill box. Hand tools and a Dremel were used to create everything seen in the room. The linoleum floor, area rug, and fabrics were accurately copied from the originals, and the corpse was dressed, with the face colored to indicate the possible cause of death. This is the only interactive model Lee made, so Munao also recreated the wire pull and tiny hinge that would allow the police to raise up the pillow next to the body to reveal an all important clue.

This is Munao’s second model to make its way into a museum collection. In 2020, he completed a 1:12 scale model of the Reading & Writing Room from the RMS Titanic, owned by the Titanic Historical Society and displayed at its Titanic Museum in Indian Orchard, Massachusetts.

March 2022 - Business card for Lizzie J. Benson

In honor of Women’s History Month, we share the story of a single woman, the daughter of immigrants, who worked hard to provide for herself in the last decades of the 19th century. A story common for the time, but rarely discussed today. The discovery of a business card for Lizzie J. Benson, seamstress and dressmaker, tucked inside a book in the Glessner library, led to the revelation of an interesting story recorded in the pages of Frances Glessner’s journal.

According to the 1900 census, Lizzie J. Benson was born in Illinois in 1857 to parents who had emigrated from Norway. Lizzie, an only child, was caring for her 77-year-old widowed mother, who had arrived in the U.S. in 1849, probably as a young bride. They lived in a modest apartment located at 3149 S. Wentworth Avenue (razed for the Dan Ryan Expressway).

The business card dates to about 1886. Benson’s address at the time, 176 West Indiana Street, would be 121 W. Grand Avenue today (near LaSalle Street, a bank now stands on the site). Her rate of $1.25 per day would be the equivalent of $37.39 in 2022 dollars, hardly a living wage, which explains the frequent references in Frances Glessner’s journal that she was helping Benson financially. Most interesting on the card are the names of four women who would provide references for Benson’s work. Frances Glessner is listed first, clearly in a position of honor, as she is the only one who is not listed alphabetically. 

The earliest reference to Benson in the journal (started in 1879) is in April 1880 when Frances Glessner notes “Lizzie here sewing.” She appears with some frequency, doing much of the sewing at the house, often in conjunction with Frances Glessner. The children became very fond of her, and she joined them for an outing to the circus.

In July 1886, Frances Glessner makes an entry that explains why she would have had Lizzie’s card on hand. She writes, “Lizzie Benson came over to see me last night about work. I sent out some of her cards today by mail to my friends.” The situation had not improved by late 1887, just before the Glessners moved to Prairie Avenue as noted in this excerpt of a letter from Benson:
“And that seems to be the way with most of my customers some have decided to keep one sewing girl steady in the house and some do the sewing themselves. . . If I don’t get steady work I don’t know what I will do for I must have work. . . Mrs. Glessner please excuse me for troubling you all the time. I know that I have been a bother to you all the time but you have been kinder to me than anybody else.” 

Benson contracted diphtheria in March 1896, Frances Glessner noting “Lizzie is poor and forlorn. I have been sending her things to eat and wear and money to help her along.”

In a note of thanks penned on March 15, 1896, Benson writes in part:
“I received the $10. And that lovely dress. I am ever so much obliged to you. I thank you a thousand times. I am so pleased I do not know what to say or do. It is the nicest dress I have ever had. I thank you Mrs. Glessner for your sympathy and cheering letters, and all you have done for me. Your letters has done me a great good.” 

There are numerous letters from Benson pasted into the journal, always thanking Frances Glessner for her kindness ranging from gifts of money and food (including a full Christmas dinner with turkey and all the trimmings) to concert tickets and sending a visiting nurse to look after her ailing mother. After Frances Glessner Lee married, she engaged Benson for her sewing work, too. Benson had known her as a little girl, and enjoyed now getting to know her children, too:
“I am still sewing for Mrs. Lee. I am so happy. Mrs. Glessner, little John is giting sweeter every day. He likes to play pretend like Mrs. Lee used to do. The other day before I came he was with his mother. She was sewing. So he said to her ‘I am going to pretend I am Lizzie Benson’.”

Frances Glessner had long encouraged Lizzie to move south on account of her health. By the time of the 1910 census, Lizzie is listed as working as a dressmaker in Mills County, Texas. In December of that year, while the Glessners were en route to Santa Barbara for the winter, John Glessner wrote, “At El Paso, Lizzie Benson the old seamstress came on the car to see Frances and she took occasion to give Lizzie her Christmas present and also some French medicine.”

It was probably the last time the two women saw each other. The final letter in the journal from Benson is dated December 26, 1912, by which time she had moved to Bogart, Georgia. The journal stops a few years later; it is not known when or where Benson died. The business card survives as a tangible link to the decades-long friendship between Lizzie Benson and Frances Glessner that stretched across the social boundaries of the time, and the struggles that Benson encountered for many years, eased by the care and compassion of her steadfast friend.

February 2022 - Lace dresser scarf from the Pullman Mansion

This beautifully crafted lace dresser scarf, which adorns the top of the dresser in Frances Glessner’s dressing room, came from the home of George and Hattie Pullman, located catty-corner to the Glessners at 1729 S. Prairie Avenue. The piece comprises duchesse lace, machine-made lace, and Point de Gaze inserts. Duchesse lace, a type of Belgian bobbin lace, is named for Marie-Henriette, Duchess of Brabant. It was first made about 1840 in Brussels and Bruges and was less expensive than true Brussels lace. It typically features bold floral designs, as seen here, with motifs joined by thin bars, known as brides. Point de Gaze is a needle lace also from Belgium, identified by its gauze-like mesh ground formed from open, twisted buttonhole stitches of very fine thread, upon which the floral and other designs were stitched.

The details behind how the piece came to Glessner House form an interesting story. Hattie Pullman died in 1921, and in November of that year, a spectacular three-day auction saw the contents of the house sold off. Among those in attendance was Herma Clark. Born in 1871 in rural Illinois, Clark came to Chicago in 1897 and obtained a position as reader to William Blair, a prominent retired merchant. He died a few months later, but she remained with his widow as secretary and companion until Mrs. Blair’s death in 1923. Six years later, Clark began writing a column for the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune, “When Chicago Was Young.” She meticulously researched each article, which documented Chicago’s history from 1854 to 1911, and many of those featured were prominent members of Chicago society she had met through her years with Mrs. Blair. The immensely popular column ran for 30 years, the last installment appearing on December 6, 1959, ten days after Clark’s death at the age of 88.

Clark purchased the dresser scarf and other small items at the Pullman auction. In the 1950s, she befriended the young artist Jack Simmerling, who was fascinated by her newspaper column as a window into Chicago’s past. She gave the dresser scarf and other items to Jack while he was in college. Jack donated the piece to Glessner House in 2003. Although 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the demolition of the fabled Pullman mansion, the dresser scarf serves as a reminder of Prairie Avenue’s heyday as the “sunny street that held the sifted few.”

January 2022 - Painting of the bee house at The Rocks

This oil painting, completed about 1896 by Frances Glessner’s elder sister, Helen Macbeth, depicts the bee house in the foreground, and a portion of the Glessners’ home, known simply as the “Big House,” at upper left. Helen Macbeth was a gifted painter and musician and spent much of her summer each year at the Glessners’ New Hampshire summer estate, The Rocks, painting numerous canvases depicting both the buildings and the beautiful landscape.

Frances Glessner began keeping bees in May 1895 when she received her first two colonies and was instructed on their care. She continued to add colonies, as can be seen in the painting, the white boxes each containing one or more hives. The bee house had been constructed a few years earlier from a design by long-time Glessner friend, Isaac Scott. It was one of a series of “summer houses” strategically placed along walking paths on the estate.

Scott spent a part of each summer at The Rocks, and once the building was repurposed as the bee house, he spent many hours embellishing it with carvings of flowers and foliage. He also carved a series of quotes relating to bees and nature on the fascia that include:

“Here ever hum the golden bees.”
(James Russell Lowell)

“He who would gather honey must brave the sting of bees.”
(Dutch proverb)

“A bee hive’s hum shall soothe my ear.”
(Samuel Rogers)

“And the bee returns with evening’s gloom.”
(Charles Tennyson Turner)

John Glessner, in a loving tribute written shortly after his wife died, commented on her work as a beekeeper:

“She had to do all the work connected with this herself, for the men were deathly afraid of bees, and it was no small work. She carefully selected the times for taking table honey from the hives, so that it might have the choicest flavor of white clover, apple blooms, etc., leaving the heavier and darker honey from buckwheat, goldenrod, etc., etc., for winter subsistence of the bees. The result was that her honey obtained the highest price in the market. She gave friends all of this honey that they would take, and then had to sell the rest to prevent waste. One season she raised over fifteen hundred pounds of such honey, and the labor was enormous, as she had to handle each pound at least six times. Then I put my foot down and the bees were given to Amherst Agricultural College.”

In 1937, the Glessners’ daughter-in-law, Alice (Hamlin) Glessner, had an in-ground swimming pool installed next to the bee house, at which time it was converted to a pool house. It was extensively restored in the early 2000s, funded by gifts from several descendants of George and Alice Glessner.

The painting, along with several others by Helen Macbeth, is on display in The Rocks Gallery.

December 2021 - Narcissus

During the family’s 1890 trip to Europe, John Glessner noted - after visiting many, many museums in both Italy and France - that he much preferred sculpture to paintings. So it is no surprise that the Glessners’ home featured multiple bronze statues (many copies of pieces found in European museums), and almost no paintings.

Frances Glessner presented her husband with this 24” tall statue of Narcissus on their tenth wedding anniversary, December 7, 1880. The character of Narcissus comes from Greek mythology, where he was known for his beauty. Rejecting all romantic advances, he eventually fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, and stared at it for the rest of his life. After he died, a flower sprouted at that site that was named for him. John Glessner found his sculpture of Narcissus quite beautiful, later referring to it as “a bronze Narcissus who may be justified in admiring himself.”

The original upon which this copy is based was discovered in 1862 during the excavation of Pompeii. The discovery attracted great attention and the building in which it was found became known as the
”Casa de Narciso” or House of Narcissus. It was sent to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, where the Glessners had the opportunity to see it in March 1890. Luigi Conforti, in his book, The National Museum of Naples, referred to Narcissus “as the most beautiful bronze ever to have been discovered at Pompeii.” (Wouldn’t Narcissus be pleased?)

Although the piece is not marked, John Glessner attributes it to the Barbedienne Foundry, the leading bronze foundry in 19th century France, which eventually employed over 300 workers. Ferdinand Barbedienne and Achille Collas started the firm in 1838, after Collas invented a machine to create bronze replicas of statues. The foundry recreated statues from museums across Europe, making the pieces accessible to many for the first time. In later years, they also began reproducing works by living artists, most notably, Auguste Rodin.

Each year at Christmas time, we adorn Narcissus with an artfully positioned red ribbon, in remembrance of one of the Glessners’ most beloved servants, Katie Fitzpatrick. In early 1882, Frances Glessner wrote in her journal about Katie’s negative response to a similar nude statue which had been placed in the dining room:
”I found the beautiful bronze Bacchus, which we placed in the dining room, on the sideboard, covered once with a towel, and again turned round with its face to the corner. I replaced it several times and uncovered it once, and finally moved it back to its place when Katie was in the room, when she informed me, she could not wait on the table with that in the room. I said “why?” - “because I don’t like the looks of it.” I told her she would have to get used to it for it would certainly stay in that room. She assured me she would have to give it up then. It has been turned to the wall once since, but John restored it before I was up. What are we coming to?!”

November 2021 - Temperantia Guéridon

One of the more unusual pieces of furniture in the Glessner house collection is an iron tripod table, known as the Temperantia guéridon. The term guéridon refers to a small table usually with a circular top, the form originating in France in the mid-17th century.

The top of the table is based on a pewter basin of the late 16th century by the French artisan Francois Briot. It is considered an excellent example of “Edelzinn” - precious pewter. Briot (1545-1616) was a leading French medalist, silversmith, and model carver. He was not a pewterer but would have created the copper mold in which the pewter copies were cast. In 1579 Briot moved to Montbéliard where his patron and protector, the Huguenot Friedrich I, Duke of Wurttemberg, later bestowed upon him the title “Gravure de Son Excellence.”  

The design of the basin was well known, and numerous casts, variations, and copies exist in both metal and earthenware. The name of the piece is derived from the central plaque which depicts the figure of temperance holding a cup and ewer (shown above at upper right). It is surrounded by four plaques representing air, water, earth and fire, with eight additional plaques on the rim depicting the Seven Liberal Arts and their patron Minerva.

The Glessner table top features the same central plaque of temperance, but the rest of the design is completely different, the inner band decorated with a repetitious design of caryatids and animals. A series of scenes depicting the parable of the prodigal son from the 15th chapter of Luke fills the outer rim. (The scene showing the son asking for the forgiveness of his father is shown above at lower right). The top is set upon a series of six slender poles rising from a tripod base decorated with caryatids. Incorporating the basin into a table is an idea first noted in 1850, when Prince Albert ordered such a piece as a birthday gift for his wife, Queen Victoria.

In the early 17th century, the Nuremberg based modeler Caspar Enderlein created a slightly modified copy of the Briot original. That version was used to create the Wimbledon ladies singles trophy, awarded annually since 1886. (The All England Club retains the presentation trophy, and the champion receives a smaller version).

The guéridon can be seen in the second-floor hall next to the Isaac Scott designed bookcase, exactly where it was originally placed by the Glessners.

October 2021 - “The Blind Fiddler” compote

This beautifully decorated compote, on display on the counter in the Butler’s Pantry, features a central design based on the well-known painting “The Blind Fiddler” by David Wilkie. The earthenware compote (a bowl-shaped dish supported on a pedestal) features polychrome transfer decoration that includes a broad band of oak leaves and acorns around both the inside and outside of the rim. The dish originally had handles which were broken off in October 1883 as noted in Frances Glessner’s journal, “While we were at lunch the china fruit dish presented me by Miss Grail was jarred off the upper shelf of sideboard and fell to the floor breaking off both handles. It has since been sent to Burley & Tyrrell’s for repairs.”

Artist Sir David Wilkie, R.A. was born in Scotland in 1785 but was based in London for most of his career. He was known for his genre scenes such as the one seen on the dish, but also painted portraits and served as “Principal Painter in Ordinary” to both King William IV and Queen Victoria. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1809. Long after his death at sea in 1841, several of his paintings were chosen by the confectioner Cadbury to adorn their candy boxes. This resulted in his work being stigmatized as sentimental “chocolate box art.”

The original oil painting, which depicts an itinerant fiddler playing for a humble country family, is painted on a mahogany board and dates to 1806. It was donated to the Tate in London in 1826. As noted on the Tate website, the painting initially created some controversy when first exhibited, as “critics thought the bust on the shelf represented a dissenting minister and concluded that the family were nonconformists.”

The compote, which measures 12 inches in width, is not marked, but the presence of “J. Austin” along the bottom edge of the central panel, confirms it was made by F. & R. Pratt & Co., Ltd., located in Fenton, Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England. The pottery produced other marked pieces with “The Blind Fiddler” artwork, created from the original by the artist and engraver Jesse Austin. He produced hundreds of polychrome prints for Pratt during his 40 years with the firm, used to decorate everything from pot lids to a variety of domestic pottery.

September 2021 - Bust of Cicero saved during the Great Chicago Fire

This modest terra cotta bust of Cicero, measuring just 6-3/4 inches in height, always occupied a place of honor in the Glessners’ library, not so much for its subject matter as for its very survival. The bust depicts Marcus Tullius Cicero (shown as “Cicerone” on the piece), a prominent Roman statesman, philosopher, and scholar who lived from 106 to 43 B.C. The Glessner library contains the collected letters of Cicero, edited by their good friend Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909.

On at least two occasions, John Glessner wrote about the bust and its survival. The more complete account is in a paper he prepared on the decorative arts collection in the house, which was read to Frances Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class. Of the bust he wrote:

“ . . . and the little terra-cotta of Cicero showing in detail the historic wart on its nose, has its story. At the time of the great Chicago fire, it was in the collection of Stanley Waters, and when the flames approached his house so closely that he couldn’t stay there, he gathered up a lot of these things, carried them across the street and buried them in the sand of a vacant lot. After the fire, he unearthed them. This bears the mark of heat in a dark streak.”

In 1876, the Glessners first became acquainted with Edward Stanley Waters, who was regarded as an expert on ancient and modern pottery. Born in 1837, he was an important mentor in helping them start their collection of decorative arts, at the time referred to as bric-a-brac. Waters had come to Chicago in 1868 to establish the Harvard School for Boys, which quickly earned the reputation of being one of the preeminent college preparatory schools in the country. He left the school in 1876 to focus on his interest in decorative arts, subsequently leaving Chicago in the mid-1880s to pursue land speculation in the Dakotas. He eventually settled in Salem, Massachusetts where he became a librarian and died in 1916.

At the time of the 1871 fire, Waters was living on Chicago Avenue, in the block immediately west of the Chicago Water Tower. He was one of many people who opted to bury valuables for later retrieval. Waters was apparently successful in recovering his buried treasures, and would have sold the piece to the Glessners after establishing his bric-a-brac business, quite possibly because of John Glessner’s particular interest in its survival during the Chicago fire.

August 2021 - “New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes”

New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes was published by the State Board of Agriculture as a way to promote the beauty of the state and its appropriateness for establishing country homes and gentleman farms. As noted in the sixth edition, published in 1908:

“Its endeavor is to picture a few of the manifold scenic beauties of the state; to record ad preserve the appreciation of them by famous men and women; and to show how well adapted are almost all sections of the state for the establishment of country homes of every sort, great and small, elegant and simple, costly and cheap, castle and camp.”

The Glessners’ summer estate, The Rocks, was located in the North Country of New Hampshire, between the towns of Bethlehem and Littleton. Its large size - roughly 1,500 acres - and its scenic beauty, resulted in it being included in most editions of the publication, and it was consistently praised as one of the finest estates in all of New Hampshire.

The 1908 edition, shown above, focused on John Glessner’s contributions to improving the condition of the roads on and around his estate, as noted in the following excerpts:

“Where the town (of Bethlehem) stopped, J. J. Glessner of Chicago, a summer resident, took up the work, at which he is no novice, having three miles of the finest road in the White Mountains within or adjoining his own estate, and all public road, although all built or rebuilt by him at his own expense. The fact that his country house is known as ‘The Rocks’ indicates a plentiful supply of good road material at hand, and as a matter of fact for several years he has been cleaning up pastures and making them into mowing land, and the rock that he has pulled out of the pastures has gone back into the roads.

“During the fall of 1907, he was working on the half mile of road on the main highway from Bethlehem to Littleton, and during most of that time had a crew of seventy men, thirty horses and twenty oxen engaged on the work. Part of this road looks like pictures of the modern French or the old Roman roads, and it is built fully as solidly as the Roman roads used to be; in fact, after the same plan.

“Starting in a moderate way a good many years ago, Mr. Glessner has gradually bought up surrounding farms . . . until he now has probably the largest, as well as the finest, private summer estate in the White Mountains. Through these farms quite a number of old town roads used to run, and several years ago Mr. Glessner secured permission to build these roads over about as he saw fit. Needless to say, the town was very glad to have him assume the work, and has shown its gratitude by conferring upon the roads the name of ‘The Glessner Roads.’

“One of these roads leads to Franconia, and is on an entirely new layout as far as it goes through Mr. Glessner’s land, the old route having been abandoned for a better one. The portion built by Mr. Glessner is three quarters of a mile long, and is a sold stone-bottom highway twenty-five feet wide. On one side, for quite a distance, runs one of the most massive stone walls in New Hampshire, six feet thick on top, about ten feet on the bottom, and in many places thirteen feet high. It was made entirely of stone taken out of the adjoining field.

“On another road near by, leading to the West Farm, is a beauty spot where a cut was made through a knoll to avoid a bad grade. The cut was faced up on both sides with some very fine stone work, and when the sun shines through upon the white birches and other trees it furnishes a very pretty site.”

Although an interstate expressway was later cut through the property, many of the roads and their adjoining stone walls remain for visitors to enjoy today.

July 2021 - Sullivan fragments salvaged by Richard Nickel

Richard Nickel (1928-1972) was an architectural photographer and historic preservationist. He is best remembered today for his efforts to salvage and document the work of architect Louis Sullivan. He was also one of the founders of the Chicago School of Architecture Foundation, organized in the spring of 1966 to purchase and save Glessner House from the wrecker’s ball. Nickel died tragically at the age of 43 while salvaging ornament in the Chicago Stock Exchange building during its demolition. His memorial service was held in the courtyard of Glessner House in June 1972.

During the last few years of his life, Nickel stored much of the ornament he was salvaging at Glessner House. Most of the pieces are now in public and private collections, the largest assemblage being located at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. His archive, including thousands of photographic images, is housed in the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. The fragments shown above have remained at Glessner House since originally brought here by Nickel more than 50 years ago.

The terra cotta and cast iron fragments shown above at left come from the Rosenfeld Building, which occupied a large corner site at 23-39 N. Halsted Street and 729-741 W. Washington Boulevard. The mixed use building, containing stores, apartments, offices, and hotel rooms, was constructed in two phases during 1881 and 1882 and a combined cost of $135,000. Commissioned as an investment property by dry-goods merchant Levi Rosenfeld, the exterior was clad in buff sandstone, amber face brick, and unglazed orange-red terra cotta. The fragment at upper left is a small section of a lunette from above a third floor window. The cast iron ornament at lower left comes from a pilaster located between the storefronts. The building was demolished in 1958.

The three terra cotta blocks shown above right were salvaged from the Martin Barbe house, built at 3157 S. Prairie Avenue in 1884. Constructed at a cost of about $20,000, the picturesque corner house featured face brick, stone, terra cotta, ornamental sheet metal, wood and slate, all in dark hues to create a harmonious whole. The house was constructed the same year Adler & Sullivan was undertaking improvements at the Sinai Temple, of which Barbe was a member. The house was demolished in 1963 following a severe fire.

The architectural fragments will be on exhibit in the Glessner House Visitors Center through October 31, 2021.

June 2021 - Guest book from The Rocks

In 1883, the Glessners completed the “Big House” at their summer estate, known as The Rocks, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire between the towns of Littleton and Bethlehem. For the remainder of their lives, this would function as home from mid-May through mid-October each year. The house was designed with numerous guest rooms to accommodate the constant stream of visitors whose stays would last from one day to several weeks.

In 1885, Frances Glessner purchased a leatherbound guest book in which visitors could record their visit. Published by Lee and Shepard of Boston in 1885, it was designed and illustrated by Annie F. Cox, author of Baby’s Kingdom, one of the first mass-marketed baby books. The full title of the guest book is The Guest-Book in which may be recorded the coming and the going of guests with pages for autographs, incidents, and sketches pertaining to pleasant visits, social calls, and other gatherings.

Pre-printed instructions were provided to help guide the guest in what to record:
“I pray you, O friend! Whomsoever this roof doth shelter in hospitality, leave here in the book sacred to friendship some record of your tarrying. The jest, the verse, the song, whose mirth or sweetness gladdened flying hours, let them be ‘noted in the book of memory.’ Or, haply, if your hand the cunning has, let the sketch be deftly drawn of quaint adventure, or charming view on land or sea, that we have shared together. Thus shall ‘The Guest-Book’ become rich in its written history, not cold and lifeless from a stranger’s hand, but each page valued for its associations – the record of choice days spent in the company of those whose ‘worth was warrant for their welcome hither.’”

As suggested, many guests chose to include a poem, pen and ink sketch, or watercolor along with their name and the date of their visit. Guests who visited more than once would sign the same page each time, adding the date of their latest visit.

The entries read like a veritable Who’s Who of the time. A few examples:
·         Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted
·         American composer John Alden Carpenter
·         CSO conductors Theodore Thomas and Frederick Stock, the latter of whom wrote much of his
Symphony No. 1 while at The Rocks
·         English artist John Elliott and his wife Maud Howe Elliott, who won the 1917 Pulitzer Prize for
the biography of her mother, Julia Ward Howe
·         Architect Charles Coolidge
·         George W. Perkins, partner in the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co.
·         Dora Louise Root, widow of architect John Wellborn Root
·         Harry Pratt Judson, second president of the University of Chicago
·         American music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
·         Architect George Shepley and his wife Julia (daughter of H. H. Richardson)

The guest book was a treasured keepsake for Frances Glessner, who no doubt turned its pages periodically to read the greetings left behind by her house guests through the years.

May 2021 - Silver vegetable dish presented to the Stocks

This month’s object, unlike earlier entries, is different in that it never belonged to the Glessners nor was it ever displayed in their home. Instead, it was purchased by the Glessners and presented to their good friends, Frederick and Elizabeth Stock, on the occasion of their silver wedding anniversary on May 25, 1921, exactly 100 years ago. It was recently donated to Glessner House by the Stocks’ great-granddaughter.

Frederick Stock was born in Jűlich, Germany in 1872 and received his early musical education from his father, a bandmaster. He attended the Cologne Conservatory, where his teachers included Engelbert Humperdinck, and then started his musical career with a position in the Municipal Orchestra of Cologne. In 1895, Theodore Thomas was in Germany recruiting musicians for his Chicago Orchestra. He auditioned Stock and hired him as a violist. Stock was promoted to assistant conductor in 1899 and assumed the position of conductor following Thomas’s death in 1905, a position Stock held until his own death in 1942.

Stock traveled from Germany to the U.S. in 1895, accompanied by his future wife, Elisabeth Muskulus, who was six years his senior. On May 25, 1896, they were married quietly in a ceremony in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, officiated by Rev. Fred Moeckli of the Immanuel Evangelical Church, the service no doubt conducted in German.

The friendship between the Glessners and Stock blossomed after he took over as music director in 1905. When Stock premiered his Symphony No. 1 on December 31, 1909 (the evening before Frances Glessner’s birthday), the dedication read “To my best friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Glessner, this Symphony is most affectionately dedicated.” That dedication only appeared on the published copy of the music. In the printed program seen by the audience, the Glessners are not mentioned by name, but their friends would have recognized them from Stock’s words which read, in part: “This symphony was written in honor of two well-beloved people, man and woman, who have won for themselves the highest esteem and loyal friendship of many of the most worthy dwellers in the land . . . To these two people, whom the composer is privileged to number among his best and dearest friends, his symphony is most affectionately dedicated.”

The Stock’s silver anniversary was not the first time Frances Glessner selected a silver gift for them. In honor of Stock’s tenth anniversary as conductor of what was, by then, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she gathered funds from 93 women to purchase a silver punch bowl, tray, and ladle. The gift was acknowledged with a reception hosted by the Stocks for the donors in the foyer of Orchestra Hall after the concert on December 20, 1914.

The sterling silver vegetable dish the Stocks received for their 25th wedding anniversary in 1921 was made by the International Silver Company of Meriden, Connecticut, formed in 1898 when several independent New England silversmiths joined together to become the world’s largest manufacturer of silverware. Today, the dish occupies a place of honor in the Glessners’ silver closet, an appropriate setting adjacent to the dining room in which the Stocks enjoyed the Glessners’ hospitality over a period of more than 30 years.

April 2021 - E. H. Sargent & Co. medicine bottle

On April 12, 2021, during excavation of the courtyard for installation of the new geothermal system, a small clear glass medicine bottle was unearthed. This is the story of that bottle (which is in near perfect condition) and a reminder of how long our garbage outlives us.

The bottle, which measures just 4-1/8 inches in height, is stamped on the front: E. H. SARGENT & Co, PHARMACISTS, CHICAGO, along with the company logo. The logo includes an upright arm holding a pharmacy balance scale, set above an oval containing the Latin phrase “EXPERTO CREDE” (expert trust) and the image of a book laying on its side, and what might be a mortar and pestle set on top.

In 1849, 18-year-old Ezekiel H. Sargent moved from Boston to Chicago to work in a drugstore, of which he was made partner. That being the year of the California Gold Rush, the store prospered by selling huge amounts of assaying and other equipment to prospectors passing through Chicago on their way West. In 1852, Sargent bought out his partner and renamed the store E. H. Sargent & Company.

The business steadily grew until it was nearly wiped out in the Chicago Fire in October 1871. By the spring of 1872, Sargent established a new drug store at the northwest corner of Wabash Avenue and 16th Street (1558 S. Wabash) and the residents of the neighborhood, including Chicago’s leading businessmen living on Prairie Avenue, became loyal customers.

In 1875, Sargent issued his first mail-order catalog as he attempted to grow his business selling chemicals and laboratory supplies. The next year, he opened his main store on State Street, just north of Madison Street. The store at 1558 S. Wabash continued until about 1885, when it was sold to another druggist.

Sargent died in April 1904, coinciding with his company’s acquisition of Richards & Company in New York, and the firm shifted its entire focus on the laboratory supply business including the development of precision instruments. The retail drug business was sold to Edward, Richard, and George Merz, who established Sargent’s Drug Store.

The bottom of the bottle is stamped W T & CO indicating that it was made by Whitall Tatum & Co., one of the largest manufacturers of prescription glassware in the 19th century. The specific mark dates the bottle to the period 1880-1895. Assuming the bottle was acquired at the local drugstore on Wabash, that narrows the timeframe to 1880-1885.

The Glessners purchased their property from the heirs of Dr. Horatio Hitchcock in March 1885, and had the house demolished in early 1886. It appears that the bottle was left behind in the Hitchcock house and was buried at the time of the demolition, remaining there until being unearthed 135 years later. It has now been placed on the ledge in John Glessner’s dressing room, beside other period medicine and toiletry bottles.

LATER HISTORY
Both parts of Sargent’s original business survive to this day. In 1968, E. H. Sargent Company and Welch Scientific Company merged to form Sargent-Welch Scientific Company, now based in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. It remains one of the country’s largest suppliers of science and laboratory equipment for schools.

In 1992, the retail drug business was merged with Carnegie Drug, long a fixture in the Drake Hotel, to form Carnegie Sargent’s Pharmacy. Its current location is in Water Tower Place.

By 1942, the site of the original drugstore at 1558 S. Wabash Avenue became the location of a Firestone dealership, which sold everything from tires to gas ranges and electric stoves. A Firestone dealership still operates at that same location today.

March 2021 - County Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland

John Glessner was an avid book collector, so it was common for him to receive books as gifts on his birthday. Among the books he received for his 46th birthday in January 1889 was a set of six volumes entitled A Series of Picturesque Views of Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland with descriptive and historical letterpress. The set had been published in London in 1880 by William Mackenzie and had previously been owned by “G. Plunkett” as indicated by his inscription on the inside front covers. A penciled notation by the bookseller on the inside back cover of Volume I notes that the price was $60.00 – a considerable sum for the time, equivalent to about $1,700 today.

Each volume features brown cloth bound boards with elaborated embossing on both front and back covers and the spine. The front cover is the most elaborate with gold and black impressed decoration including Tudor roses, thistles, shamrocks, and crowns, all surrounding a central medallion featuring the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom and the motto “DIEU ET MON DROIT” which translates to “God and my right.” The spine is impressed in gold and features the Prince of Wales’s feathers beneath the volume number. The back cover is blind impressed – it features the same designs as the front cover, but no gold or black has been added.

A total of 241 houses are featured in the series, an expansion of the earlier two-volume set published in 1866. Each house is represented by a full-color plate on heavy stock, with a protective page separating it from two pages of text, giving historical and architectural information on the house and the family.

The volumes represent the last major collaboration between three significant individuals. The editor, Rev. Francis Orpen Morris (1810-1893), was an Irish clergyman, but was best known as the author of numerous books on birds, natural history, and historic architecture as well as many children’s books. The artist, Alexander Francis Lydon (1836-1917), was a well-known British watercolor artist and illustrator, known for his depiction of natural history and landscapes, many in collaboration with Rev. Morris. He was apprenticed at an early age to the printer of the volumes, Benjamin Fawcett (1808-1893), who was considered among the finest woodblock color printers in England at the time.

The fine bindings, beautiful color illustrations, and detailed historical information speak to both the quality of the Glessner library and John Glessner’s long-standing interest in European history.

February 2021 - Cabinet curtains made from a Chinese skirt

The mahogany music cabinet in the parlor features multiple shelves for the storage of sheet music. These shelves are concealed with a pair of silk cabinet curtains, repurposed from a Chinese skirt. The original skirt consisted of two heavily embroidered main panels, one which hung in front and one in the rear (one main panel is shown above at left). The side panels were simpler in design with far less embroidery and were usually pleated (one side panel is shown above at right). All panels were bordered with black satin and silk ribbon.

The skirt was wrapped around the waist and overlapped, being held in place with knotted buttons and fabric loops. For this reason, they were sometimes referred to as aprons. The cotton or hemp waistband was perfectly plain and helped to hold the skirt in place. Skirts such as these would have been worn with trousers and jackets, the jacket covering the unadorned waistband.

The skirt from which these curtains were made dates to the late Qing dynasty, and prior to 1888, when they first show up in historic photographs of the parlor. The silk was originally a brilliant plum color, now visible only in the deep folds, as most has faded to brown due to its prolonged exposure to light.

An examination of the fine needlework shows the expertise of the individual who made the skirt. Frances Glessner, being an expert needle worker herself, would no doubt have greatly appreciated the skill needed to create the numerous objects depicted. Work includes silk embroidered couch stitching, the use of gilt wrapped thread, and the “forbidden stitch,” (also known as a Peking stitch) which consists of small knots formed by winding thread around a needle three or four times, and then plunging it through the middle of the coil and fabric. Objects embroidered on to the main panels (which are identical) include flowers, butterflies, table screens, vases, goldfish in a bowl, and various Taoist symbols.

To see a detail of the embroidery, view the banner image here.
To see a similar skirt in its original configuration from the Cooper Hewitt collection, click here.

January 2021 - Herkomer portrait of H. H. Richardson

One of the most prominent objects on display in the house is the large framed portrait of architect Henry Hobson Richardson, hung in the main hall by the staircase. It is one of the few items to have remained in the house continuously since 1887, the deed to Armour Institute in 1938 specifically noting that the portrait must always remain on display. The portrait is a monochromatic copy of the original oil painting produced with the heliotype process, which involves printing from a plate coated with gelatin. The portrait was in process in February 1886 when the Glessners visited the Boston studio of English artist Hubert von Herkomer as noted in Frances Glessner's journal, "After luncheon we went to see Hubert Herkomer the artist. We had a letter to him from Mr. Shepley. He left the room full of people and sat and talked with us. There we saw the portrait he has painted of Mr. Richardson. We had a note and little picture (present to me) and his wife's epitaph sent to us today by him." Two months later, the Glessners purchased two small watercolors from Herkomer, which are displayed in the parlor over the music cabinet.

The original oil painting, which measures 44.5" x 56.25" was placed over the fireplace in the main parlor of Richardson's Brookline home; it remained there until the family sold the house in 2000. It was purchased by the National Portrait Gallery in 2009, where it is on permanent display in East Gallery 120. 

John Glessner recorded the acquisition of the portrait in his 1923 The Story of a House: "This portrait was painted under peculiar circumstances. Herkomer had designed for himself a house in [Bushey, Hertfordshire, England], and was not satisfied with the elevation. Coming to this country with some pictures, he called on Richardson with the request that he be permitted to paint his portrait. "But I haven't money to pay for it," objected Richardson. "You don't need to pay money for it," said Herkomer. "If you will sketch an elevation for my house I'll paint your portrait." And that was all the contract. The elevation was drawn, the portrait was painted. Herkomer showed us the work and promised to etch it and give me the first signed proof, and Richardson agreed to sign also, but alas the great architect died and his widow was unwilling that the portrait be taken to England to be etched. So I lost my double-signed proof; but Mrs. Richardson had the portrait photographed . . . two copies printed and the plate destroyed. This is one of those two copies, and now hangs in the hall." (The whereabouts of the second copy is unknown).

The portrait shows Richardson seated in his study, surrounded by favorite objects. His straight on pose and the large size of the canvas draw in the viewer. The Glessners' copy is smaller, measuring 28" x 35.25" and is mounted in a simple oak frame which is screwed into the paneling of the main hall. Around 1925, John Glessner inserted a small note from Richardson into the lower left hand corner, apparently to substitute for the original signature promised for the etching that never came to be. The photo shown above was taken by Richard Nickel about 1966.

December 2020 - Glass Christmas tree ornament

One of the most interesting recent additions to the collection is a rare example of a glass Christmas tree ornament, known as a kugel.  The only ornament in the collection owned by the Glessner family, it was purchased by John and Frances Glessner when they attended the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in August 1876, hence the prominent dates of 1776 and 1876.  After both of their children married in 1898, the Christmas ornaments were split among George and Frances.  George received this ornament, which was then passed down to his eldest daughter Elizabeth (Glessner) Edge, who passed it down to her daughter Elizabeth (Edge) Carter.  Her daughter, Elizabeth Hamlin Carter, later inherited it, and presented it to Glessner House during a visit in December 2018 with her two children. 

Kugel is the term for a specific type of heavy glass Christmas ornament made in Germany, usually lined with silver, and featuring an embossed brass cap for hanging.  First produced in Germany in 1848, these heavy glass ornaments (not to be confused with the later thin-walled glass ornaments produced after 1900) were relatively unknown in the U.S. at the time of the 1876 Exposition.  As such, this ornament would have been quite a novelty when the Glessners acquired it and brought it home to their son George, who would have been just five years old when it was first hung on the family Christmas tree. After moving to Prairie Avenue in December 1887, the children would have hung the ornament on the small table-top Christmas tree in their schoolroom.

The Centennial Exposition, held in Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park from May 10 to November 10, 1876, was the first official World’s Fair in the United States, and was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. An estimated ten million people attended the fair, visiting the 200 buildings and exhibits from 37 countries. The Main Exhibition Building, measuring 464 by 1880 feet, was the largest building in the world at the time. The Glessners spent two days at the Fair, viewing everything from the right arm of the Statue of Liberty holding its torch, to the world’s largest knife and fork (measuring more than 10 feet in height). Today, only two buildings remain from the Fair - Memorial Hall and the Ohio House (which the Glessners would have certainly visited, both being native Ohioans.)

November 2020 - Pine Needle pen holder and stamp box

Tiffany Studios, best known for its leaded-glass windows, lamps, and vases, also produced a wide variety of decorative objects for the home, which it termed “fancy goods.” Among the most popular of these goods were items made for use on the desk, created in twenty different patterns. A pen holder and stamp box, both in the Pine Needle pattern, sit on Frances Glessner’s desk in her bedroom – but one is by Tiffany, and the other is not.

Tiffany’s production of fancy goods began in 1897 when he added a foundry for making metal objects to his Corona glass factory in Queens, New York. Cast objects were usually made of bronze, and many feature an antiqued or patinated green finish, achieved by placing the object in a chemical bath. The earliest desk sets, comprised of at least six pieces, were produced in the Grapevine and Pine Needle motifs, both of which incorporated etched metal and glass. The motif was created by applying an acid which ate through the thin metal sheets to create the filigree pattern. (Tiffany used a similar process to create his flashed glass). The metal is backed with pieces of slag glass, with green and white marbled glass used for the Glessner pieces.

The pen tray, which was made by Tiffany Studios, sits on bun feet, measures 9-3/4” long by 2-7/8” wide, and is designed to hold three pens, held apart by the three ridges in the two metal supports. The stamp box, which is not by Tiffany Studios, sits on ball feet, measures 4-5/8” wide by 3-1/4” long and is hinged. The box also features beading along the inner and outer edges of the lid, and along the base. These details were found on Tiffany pieces, but the clue is that the stamp box bears no maker’s mark. The pen tray is clearly stamped “Tiffany Studios 1004.” A company known as Riviere Studios produced items in the Pine Needle pattern which were nearly identical to those made by Tiffany, but the pieces do not bear a maker’s mark. Since the stamp box is not marked, it is safe to assume it is a Riviere Studios copy of an actual Tiffany box.

Although fancy goods were considered stock items by Tiffany Studios and were relatively inexpensive compared to lamps and vases, distribution was still carefully controlled. In New York, items could only be obtained at the Tiffany Studios retail outlet or at Tiffany & Co; in Chicago, they were retailed exclusively through Marshall Field & Co., which is where Frances Glessner most likely acquired her pen tray. Tiffany continued to expand its line of merchandise that was appropriate for gifts, adding picture frames, calendar holders, planters, mirrors, ash trays, clocks, dishes, and more, in patterns to match the desk sets, or in their own unique designs. Production was greatly reduced during World War I, and no pieces bearing the Tiffany Studios stamp were made after 1918. New pieces were produced under the Tiffany Furnaces name; the furnaces and foundry were closed permanently in 1938.

October 2020 - Spaulding & Co. ladies pocket watch

One of the newest additions to the collection is Frances Glessner’s silver niello pocket watch, with Swiss movement, acquired in September from Hess Fine Auctions in St. Petersburg, Florida. The diminutive piece, with a face measuring just 1-1/8 inches in diameter, shows wear on its elaborately decorated case, indicating it was often carried by its owner.

Niello refers to a mixture, usually comprised of sulfur, copper, silver, and lead, that is formed into a paste and spread over etched metal, filling the gaps. Once fired, it melts and turns black, forming a distinct contrast with the polished metal decoration. The Glessners’ rice bowl on display in the dining room, acquired from the government of Siam at the close of the World’s Columbian Exposition, is another example of niello (see Object of the Month for February 2017).

The inside of the case is inscribed, “Frances Glessner, 1800 Prairie Ave., Festival 1894.” The reference to the 1894 festival is uncertain, as there is no mention of the watch in her journal, but there is one possible clue. She did attend the Cincinnati May Festival in 1894. Her good friend, and Chicago Orchestra founder, Theodore Thomas, served as music director of the biennial choral festival from the time of its founding in 1873 until his death in 1905.

The watch was acquired from Spaulding & Co. in Chicago, generally regarded as the leading jewelry house west of New York City. The Glessners purchased many items from Spaulding’s through the years, including most of their silver flatware and holloware. The firm was founded by Henry Abiram Spaulding (1837-1904) when he purchased the business of S. Hord & Co., founded in Chicago in 1855. Spaulding began working in the jewelry business at the age of 20, and, in 1871, was appointed the general representative for Tiffany & Co. in Europe, maintaining his office in Paris. In 1888, unable to convince Tiffany & Co. to open a branch in Chicago, he left the firm and opened Spaulding & Co. An article from 1894 noted, “In less than five years, Spaulding’s has been made to Chicago what Tiffany’s is to New York, and it is doubtful if any other business establishment in the city attracts so many visitors who come to see the unique and magnificent display of beautiful things.”

The company occupied a six-story building at the southeast corner of State and Jackson. The manufacturing departments occupied the upper floors, producing the diamond mountings and special designs in gold and silver for which the firm was known. The sales floors featured jewelry, watches, stationery, silverware, leather goods, clocks, statuary, bronzes, cut-glass, and objets d’art. In 1893, they received international recognition for producing the 500 gold, silver, and bronze badges presented to the national and local officers, directors, and chiefs of departments at the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Spaulding & Co. later moved to new showrooms in the McCormick Building at Michigan and Van Buren, and in 1934 moved into the Drake Hotel. In 1973, the firm was acquired by Stewart S. Peacock, great-great grandson of the founder of C. D. Peacock, and he operated the business until it closed in 1989.

September 2020 - Floating bath thermometer

This month’s object is a utilitarian item that was used to measure the temperature of bath water. Thermometers such as these were widely advertised, an example appearing in the Montgomery Ward catalog in the 1890s for 48 cents. This particular thermometer was made in Germany and was retailed through S. Joseph Co., Inc. in New York City, a company founded in 1892.

The device consisted of a mercury thermometer housed in a lightweight wood casing with a hole near the bottom so that the base of the thermometer would be exposed to the water. A cork in the bottom held the thermometer in place, and a cord at the top allowed it to be hung near the bathtub.

The temperature is marked in ten-degree increments, extending from -10 degrees to 160 degrees with key temperatures noted as follows, according to “Dr. Forbes’ Specifications”:
32 – Freezing
45 – Cold bath
66 – Cool
78 – Temperate
86 – Tepid
96 – Warm
105 – Hot

Sir John Forbes (1787-1861) was a Scottish physician and strong advocate of therapeutic bathing (in an age when many people did not bathe on a regular basis). He is remembered today as the physician to Queen Victorian from 1841 until his death, and for translating an important French medical text by Rene Laennec, the inventor of the stethoscope. The specifications noted on the thermometer were “founded on practical indications” amidst research he conducted over many years, as noted in a 1909 article, “The Psychophysics of Climate” by E. B. Titchener which was published in The American Journal of Psychology. In later writings, he also made his case for the healing powers of nature, which reinforced his belief in the importance of bathing.

The thermometer was left in the house when the Glessners’ other belongings were packed up and removed. It was discovered by Jim Martin, a long-time employee of the Lithographic Technical Foundation, which operated out of the Glessner house from 1945 until 1965. When the Foundation moved out, Martin took the thermometer with him as a keepsake. In December 2019, his two daughters returned it to the house, a circuitous path for an object that could have easily been discarded decades ago.

August 2020 - Galleon tile triptych by William De Morgan

The work of designer and potter William De Morgan is well represented at Glessner House and includes two sets of fireplace tiles and a magnificent loop-handled vase. Often overlooked, however, is a beautiful tile triptych depicting a galleon which hangs in its historic location over the north-facing window of the library. De Morgan created no less than 18 standard ship designs which were reproduced as single tiles, or across multi-tile panels, as is the case with the Glessners’ piece.

The original pencil drawing for the triptych, now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, was executed during De Morgan’s years in Chelsea, 1872 to 1881. The drawing is pricked, indicating that the design was transferred to the tiles using a traditional method. With this process, the pattern is pricked with tiny holes, placed on the tiles, and then pounced with a fine powder that filters through the holes, leaving dots on the tile forming the outline of the design. In this way, the main features of the design are the same on each triptych, but since they are finished freehand, each piece is unique.

The Glessners’ triptych, still in its original ebonized frame (not shown), depicts an eagle-prowed galleon, featuring three sails and long flags, facing toward a setting sun at the left. The silhouette of thirteen figures can be seen on the deck, including a seated king surrounded by musicians and attendants, and sailors at work. Happy fish jump from the sea and birds can be seen flying overhead. The triptych is an excellent example of De Morgan’s red lusterware, displaying a finish he experimented with extensively throughout his career. The process involved mixing copper or silver oxides into white clay which was painted on to the fused glaze finish of the tile. After firing in the kiln with reduced oxygen, the clay could be wiped away revealing the metallic luster which had adhered to the surface.

At least ten other examples of this basic design are known to exist, some in red luster, others in full color. In addition to variations resulting from the hand painting such as the decoration of the sails, the number of figures on the deck or birds in the sky, other more significant variants include the ship facing left or right, the depiction of the prow as an eagle or a swan, and the presence or absence of the sun. Later tiles show another major change with a huge mythological bird of prey known as a Roc overhead, being attacked by archers standing on the deck.

The three surviving examples closest to the Glessners’ piece all reside in England and include one of four galleon triptychs in the De Morgan Collection in London, one at Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton (a property of the National Trust), and one made in 1886 for De Morgan’s friend, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson for the fireplace of his room at Christ Church, Oxford. Dodgson is better known as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it has been noted that the galleon, and the other fireplace tiles which featured fantastical creatures, were inspired by Alice and Carroll’s nonsense poem Jabberwocky. After Dodgson’s death, the tiles were made into a fire screen which is still used in the Senior Common Room at Christ Church, Oxford.

July 2020 - 1901 Instructions for the Household

Each year in May, Frances Glessner would leave Chicago for her summer estate, The Rocks, situated between Littleton and Bethlehem, New Hampshire. All of the key staff, including the butler, cook, and ladies’ maid, would accompany her, leaving only a few individuals to care for John Glessner, who would stay in Chicago to tend to business, joining his family in late July.

In 1901, Frances Glessner wrote out specific instructions for the staff that stayed behind. This was important, as the duties of each member of the much smaller staff were expanded beyond what was normal when the house was fully staffed. The instructions include basic information on how to keep the house comfortable during the summer, reminders to utilize resources carefully, and perhaps most importantly, specific information on the foods to prepare for her husband.

Directions for basic household functions include the following:

When the weather is warm, open the windows and door to court yard early in the morning and at about six in the evening - open only doors and windows which have wire screens.

Keep a bottle of filtered, bottled water in Mr. Glessner’s dressing room. Bring in a pitcher of this same water at 10 o’clock at night.

In closing up the house in the evening, watch the kerosene lamps after they are lighted to see that they do not blaze up too much and smoke. The lamps in the parlor are very apt to do this.

When Mr. Glessner goes away the last of July, then roll up all of the light shades, and draw down the dark ones to halfway over the windows.

Be as careful as possible of the lights, using none where they are not needed.

The majority of the information listed in detail foods that John Glessner did not like, foods that he liked for breakfast and dinner, and then several suggested bills of fare. He appears to have been a finicky eater, as the list of foods he did not like includes fish, bananas, cereal, tea, coffee, chocolate, sausage, most sweets, and honey - the last a surprise given that Frances Glessner was a beekeeper. The most important instruction regarding meals - a fresh orange was to be served with EVERY meal.

June 2020 - Prairie Avenue illustration from the Land Owner, 1874

This illustration, depicting several of Prairie Avenue’s most prominent homes, appeared in the May 1874 issue of the Land Owner, a publication launched in 1869 by John M. Wing to promote Chicago’s growth and improvement, with a focus on building and construction. It was an active period on Prairie Avenue, with multiple residences under construction, due to its rising prominence and its prime location outside of the area burned in the Great Chicago Fire less than three years earlier. Regarding this illustration, the author noted:

“Our artist shows in this issue a number of the beautiful houses on Prairie avenue, one of the most fashionable and handsomely built of all our South-Side thoroughfares.  No city in the world can rival Chicago in its residences, a fact which shows that this class of buildings has not suffered by the fire and the consequent turning of capital into the erection of business blocks.

“After all, one of the greatest attractions a city can offer is its homes, for to obtain them is the end of most men’s aspirations, for which they toil and sweat in the counting-room and at the various trades and professions.  Visitors who crowd to Chicago neglect to see the homes of our citizens, being wholly absorbed and astonished by the wonderful buildings put up since the fire in the burnt district.  They should not fail to visit such streets as Prairie avenue, where the home-life of our citizens of means is laid.”

The residences depicted (starting at upper left and going clockwise) are as follows:
Louis Wahl, 2026 S. Prairie Avenue
Prairie Avenue looking southwest at 18th Street
Edson Keith, 1906 S. Prairie Avenue
Charles M. Henderson, 1816 S. Prairie Avenue
Marshall Field, 1905 S. Prairie Avenue
Robert Law, 1620 S. Prairie Avenue
George M. Pullman, 1729 S. Prairie Avenue (then under construction)
A. A. Dewey, 1730 S. Prairie Avenue
(center) Daniel M. Thompson, 1936 S. Prairie Avenue

All of the residences shown have been lost, the last being the Marshall Field house which was demolished in 1955.

May 2020 - H. H. Richardson’s sketch

One of the most important artifacts in the collection is the initial sketch for the house, which H. H. Richardson made while dining with the Glessners on the evening of May 14, 1885 - exactly 135 years ago. Richardson had come to Chicago to meet with Marshall Field regarding the construction of his wholesale store building (demolished 1930); this was also his initial meeting with the Glessners. The brilliance of the sketch - showing a most atypical floorplan for a house on a corner lot - lies in how quickly Richardson came up with the plan, and how he remained true to it throughout the design process.

Frances Glessner recorded the following in her journal regarding May 13:
”The young ladies came to luncheon and while we were at table Mr. Richardson came - bringing with him his assistant Mr. Shepley. We talked over the house and he then went with John to look at the lot. He was much pleased with that - and said he would make us an ideal house. Mr. R. is the largest man I have ever seen . . . He showed us the plan of Mr. Warder’s house (in Washington, D.C.) - asked me for our photograph of Abingdon Abbey - he wants to make that the keynote for our house.”

On May 15, she recorded the details of the dinner with Richardson the previous evening:
”We invited them to dinner here last evening - the time set was six o’clock - but they afterward postponed it to seven. We gave them a nice dinner. Asparagus, cream soup, claret, baked white fish, New Orleans sauce, cucumbers, radishes, spring chickens, peas, gooseberry sauce, pickles, olives, cheese salad, crackers, almonds, champagne, strawberry shortcake, apricots, cherries, strawberries, coffee. He enjoyed his dinner - and said the “pie” (shortcake) was the nicest thing he ever ate. He made a little pencil sketch for us of the house.”

John Glessner also recorded the events in 1923 when he wrote The Story of a House, adding a few details to what was recorded in the journal:
”Richardson and I drove down to see the lot . . . He didn’t get out of the carriage, but looked at the place attentively and in silence for some minutes, and then blurted out — “Have you courage to build the house without windows on the street front?”  And promptly I said “Yes,” knowing that I could tear up the plan if I didn’t like it.  Then he added, “I wish I didn’t have to go to dinner this evening.  I’d give you the plan of your house in the morning.”  He was to dine at Mr. Field’s that night, and with us the next night, and go from our house to the train. 

“While the last course of our dinner was being removed before dessert, he called for pencil and paper, saying:  “If you won’t ask me how I get into it, I will draw the plan for your house.”  First making a few marks to get an idea of the scale, he rapidly drew the first floor plan, almost exactly as it was finally decided on.  The dessert was strawberry shortcake, for which our cook was famous.  He asked for a second piece, with the added remark — “Mrs. Glessner, that’s the best pie I ever put in my mouth.”

April 2020 - Annunciator

The annunciator, or servants call box, is mounted to the east wall in the kitchen. Large houses which employed live-in staff would have all had an annunciator or equivalent device to provide an easy way for employers to communicate with their staff whenever something was needed. As Mary Alice Molloy noted in her book, Prairie Avenue Servants, “The annunciator was a nineteenth century household innovation that employers loved and servants hated.” When the box rang, “the servant assigned that portion of the house was expected to drop everything and fulfill whatever request was made. It was a call that had to be obeyed whenever it sounded.”

A series of twelve buttons were located throughout the house, each of which connected to a specific indicator on the annunciator panel. In addition to buttons at the front and side doors, there were buttons in each of the family and guest bedrooms, as well as John Glessner’s dressing room, the schoolroom, parlor, library, and Frances Glessner’s conservatory. When the button was pressed, the box would ring and the arrow would move clockwise to indicate the source of the call. The low-voltage electrical system operated off of a wet cell battery for the first several years the Glessners occupied their home, until electricity was installed throughout the house in 1892.

The annunciator was manufactured by the Western Electric Company, which was based in Chicago. Started by Elisha Gray and Enos Barton as a telegraph supply company in 1869, it was renamed Western Electric Manufacturing Co. in 1872, by which time it had constructed its own building at Kinzie and State streets. A brass plate on the front of the annunciator lists four patents - two issued to Elisha Gray in 1871 and 1875, one issued to Edward A. Hill in 1871, and one issued to Charles W. Lewis in 1876 (for an improved annunciator dial).

Hill’s patent was for a hotel annunciator, and included important advances for connecting multiple rooms with the annunciator panel. The most important patents, however, were issued to Elisha Gray, a prominent engineer of the period, who was issued multiple patents for devices relating to telegraphy, telephony, and electrical signaling. In addition to his work on annunciators, and early versions of what we know today as music synthesizers and fax machines, he spent years developing the technology behind the telephone, and filed a caveat, or provisional patent, with the U.S. Patent Office on February 14, 1876. Alexander Graham Bell filed his paperwork the same day and a legal battle continued until 1879 when Western Electric withdrew from the telephone market. American Bell Telephone Company acquired Western Electric in 1881, and the division became its primary manufacturing arm. It was Western Electric, as a wholly owned subsidiary of American Bell Telephone Company, that produced our annunciator panel in 1887.

Watch a YouTube video demonstrating the annunciator at Glessner House.

March 2020 - Invalid Feeder

During the Glessners’ lifetime, illness was almost always treated at home. In the days before the development of highly specialized equipment including IV drips and monitors, a doctor or nurse could just as easily treat the patient in their own home. Frances Glessner, who suffered from various maladies through the years, frequently mentioned being visited at home by a variety of doctors and nurses. She even underwent fairly complex surgery at home, being moved into one of the second floor guestrooms, where she spent several weeks recuperating, before being well enough to come down to the first floor. In the last two years of her life, she was cared for by six trained nurses, who worked in pairs in rotating eight-hour shifts.

The treatment of the ill at home required certain devices that are unrecognizable to us today. One of these was known as an invalid feeder. The idea was simple - the shape of the feeder, with its extended spout, made it easy to feed patients who were lying in bed. The feeder could be used to pour milk, broth, or other liquids into the patient’s mouth. Often a mixture of bread, milk, and sugar or honey, known as pap, was distributed from the feeder; as such, the feeders were sometimes referred to as pap boats.

The feeder shown above measures just under seven inches from the handle to the tip of the spout and holds just a few ounces. It is made of white porcelain with only a simple embossed design of foliage around the opening. Feeders could be much more decorative with elaborate painted or transferware designs, and examples exist made of pewter, silver, and crystal. The majority were made in Europe, where they are still used today, although their use in the United States seemed to have waned in the first decades of the 20th century. Those made for use in hospitals were perfectly plain, except for the application of a red cross on the side.

Special feeders were also developed for administering food and liquid to young children and are known as infant feeders. These are distinguished by the end of the spout which tends to be more rounded, resembling a nipple. It could be wrapped with cloth for the baby to suck upon. Infant feeders can be found in the shape of animals and other charming designs that would have appealed to the little patients. These items are actively collected today by members of The American Collectors of Infant Feeders, which publishes a quarterly newsletter, “Keeping Abreast.”

For those interested in seeing an invalid feeder in use, look for one in the 1996 movie, The English Patient, when it is used to feed the stranger played by Ralph Fiennes.

February 2020 - Shigaraki tea vessel

John and Frances Glessner were deeply interested in Japanese design, which swept across the United States after Commodore Matthew Perry reestablished trade between Japan and the western world in 1853, for the first time in 200 years. They furnished their home with numerous objects including ceramics, textiles, a bronze temple gong (see “Object of the Month” for September 2017), and Japanese leather wallcovering in the dining room. Many of the pieces were acquired from Edward Greey, a leading dealer in Japanese goods based in New York, whom the Glessners would visit annually during the trip up to their summer estate in New Hampshire.

The library includes several books on Japanese design and culture (including two written, and inscribed to Frances Glessner, by Edward Greey), indicating that they studied the topic carefully before making their purchases. The Glessners were also charter subscribers to Artistic Japan magazine, published by the progressive Parisian art dealer, Siegfried Bing, between 1888 and 1891. Each issue featured lavish full-color plates depicting Japanese art from important collections, and articles penned by the leading European scholars and collectors of Japanese art. In 1891, the Glessners received a visit from the respected collector Professor Edward S. Morse, who amassed a collection of more than 5,000 pieces of Japanese pottery and ceramics that survives as the “Morse Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

In contrast to the more decorative pieces in the Glessner collection, the large vessel shown above, which measures nearly three feet in height, was crafted as a utilitarian object. It is attributed to the Shigaraki kiln, one of the six ancient kilns of Japan, which produced its wares in Koka in the Shiga prefecture of the Kansai region on the main island of Honshu. The area is known for its abundant supply of fine clay, formed from decomposed granite, which is easy to mold and produces a rough texture. The bottom portion of the vessel is left unglazed, exposing the rough clay surface.

Made during the Meiji period, 1868-1912, the vessel was designed as a storage jar. Period photos show identical vessels being packed with tea for shipment to the United States. The applied lip of the vessel is deeply recessed underneath, to allow a heavy cloth or hide to be securely tied over the top, thus keeping the contents dry during shipment.

The large vessel was made using a method known as hand coiling. The bottom of the vessel would be formed first on a potter’s wheel in a traditional manner. After that portion was finished, a long coil of wedged clay was laid onto the base and would be worked upward to form the rest of the vessel. The piece was then covered with a heavy creamy white slip-coating and decorated with a crystalline copper-green glaze that was allowed to run down the side, forming the irregular vertical stripping pattern. 

The Glessners kept the piece at their summer home, The Rocks, in Littleton, New Hampshire, with historic images showing it used on the porch of the house. It is now displayed adjacent to the newel post of the staircase in the first-floor main hall.

January 2020 - Copper relief portrait by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

For his 67th birthday on January 26, 1910, Frances Glessner presented her husband John with this copper relief portrait of the artist Jules Bastien-Lepage, created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Set within a wide oak frame, the relief is coated with a bronze patina, which brings out the fine detailing of both the subject and his palette and brushes. The Glessners had met Saint-Gaudens nearly twenty years earlier, while attending a small luncheon at the home of Maud Howe Elliott. In her journal entry for December 11, 1891, Frances Glessner noted, “We both went to Mrs. John Elliott’s to luncheon. There we met Augustus Saint-Gaudens -who came in for a few minutes with Mr. Elliott.”

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) was an American sculptor whose fame was rapidly growing at the time he created the piece in 1880 while in Paris. It was one of a series of relief portraits he did of friends and acquaintances. Several copies of the Bastien-Lepage portrait were cast in 1881, which can be found in the collections of major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago (American Art, Gallery 161).

Saint-Gaudens recalled the circumstances of its creation:

“Then, too, through a mutual friend I met Bastien-Lepage, who was in the height of the renown he had achieved by his painting of Joan of Arc. . . Lepage was short, bullet-headed, athletic and in comparison with the majority of my friends, dandified in dress. I recall his having been at the Beaux Arts during the period I studied there, and my disliking him for this general cockiness. He asked if I would make a medallion of him in exchange for a portrait of myself. Of course I agreed to the proposal, and as his studio was not far from mine, the medallion was modeled during a period when he was unable to work on account of a sprained ankle. He moved away shortly afterward, and I saw little of him except for the four hours a day when I posed for the full-length sketch he made of me. This painting was destroyed in the fire which burned my studio in 1904.”

Saint-Gaudens’ son, Homer, recalled that his father was especially pleased with the medallion:

“Yet none of the medallions my father then modeled satisfied him to the extent of that of Bastien-Lepage, both because he believed the relief was as near perfection as he ever came, and because he was greatly interested in a rare combination of talent and vanity in his sitter. His attitude toward Lepage’s art needs no other expression than his own. His memories of the painter’s conceits he left unrecorded. One in especial, however, remains by me: my father’s amusement in Lepage’s often telling him not to draw the hands too large, the painter, giving, as an excuse for his attitude, the reason that the hands were of small importance in comparison with the rest of the figure.”

The piece hangs today on the south wall of the second floor hall.

December 2019 - Gesu Bambino engraving

John and Frances Glessner were active and enthusiastic collectors of steel engravings throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This engraving, entitled Gesu Bambino (the Italian name for the baby Jesus) is an appropriate subject for December, not only for the topic, but also because it was received as a Christmas gift.

The vast majority of the Glessners’ engravings were acquired through Frederick Keppel (1845-1912), a prominent dealer in engravings, who maintained offices in both London and New York. He frequently exhibited in Chicago at the store of Jansen, McClurg & Co. and had a local representative, Albert Roullier, through whom the Glessners acquired their pieces. In late November 1880, Frances Glessner noted in her journal that Roullier sent a large grouping of engravings for review, of which they selected 21 for purchase, the total price being $596.50. Included in this purchase was the Gesu Bambino engraving for which they paid $3.75, the least expensive in the purchase.

The Gesu Bambino engraving was executed by Mauro Gandolfi, an Italian painter and engraver of the Bolognese school. It shows the baby Jesus lying in a manger with outspread arms, while beams of heavenly light descend from above. Gandolfi was born in 1764 to the painter Gaetano Gandolfi; his six younger brothers were all painters as well. In the 1790s he was made a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, but by the early 1800s was focusing his attention on engraving. Following a period of time in Paris engraving works in the French museums, he returned to Italy, later traveling to the United States, where he published a series of illustrations depicting New York City and Philadelphia. The Gesu Bambino engraving was printed by Giovanni Zecchi in Bologna, during the first quarter of the 19th century.

John Glessner presented the engraving to his wife as a Christmas gift, and added the penciled notation “With Christmas compliments 1880, J. J. Glessner” in the lower right hand corner. Family friend Isaac Scott designed an elegant walnut frame for the piece with simple reeding on the face and sides, and small corner blocks featuring stylized flowers, each corner in a different design. The engraving is set within a deeply beveled gold leafed inner mat, surrounded by a broader burgundy colored velvet mat. It hangs in the second floor bedroom hallway, its subject matter and fine detailing often noted by visitors.

November 2019 - Hand-carved Windsor Chair

One of the most distinctive pieces of furniture in the collection is an ebonized Windsor chair, in use as the desk chair in Fanny’s Bedroom. Thanks to Frances Glessner’s meticulously journal keeping for forty years, the history of this piece has been preserved, providing greater insight and appreciation for its carved decoration.

Frances Glessner joined the Society of Decorative Art shortly after its founding in 1877. It had been formed by a group of society ladies in Chicago as a way of providing a “respectable and fulfilling means of self support for their less fortunate sisters.” Frances Glessner ordered several pieces from the Society, including two pairs of elaborately embroidered portieres for the parlor, designed by Morris & Co. For a period of time, she took lessons in hammering brass, and also supervised the wood carving classes. In a journal entry dated November 16, 1881, she noted bringing this chair to the class as an example of the work that had been done by a previous student. Although the name of the carver is lost to time, the quality of the carving indicates a promising career.

Foliate designs are carved on the arms and legs, but it is the pommeled saddle seat (shaped for comfort) that draws the most attention. The carver ornamented the seat with a central cross-hatched vase containing a bouquet of stylized six petaled flowers arrayed against a stippled background. The overall design is reminiscent of 17th century carved panels on English case furniture, and the carver may well have consulted a book on English furniture as inspiration.

In 1891, the Society of Decorative Art was purchased by its superintendent, and Frances Glessner recommended that the treasury of the Society be used “as a nucleus to buy articles pertaining to the industrial arts such as pottery, china, tapestries, embroideries, etc. to be presented to the Art Institute and marked in such a way that credit will be given to the society for the gift.” Family friend and Art Institute president Charles Hutchinson praised her suggestion stating, “I wish the Art Institute had a dozen champions like yourself, how it would grow.” In 1894, the Society changed its name to the Antiquarians of the Art Institute; it remains active today, continuing to make significant purchases for the museum collection as originally envisioned by Frances Glessner.

October 2019 - Theodore Thomas Framed Memorial

The Victorians developed elaborate customs for mourning and for remembering their loved ones through the creation of memorial objects that adorned their homes - a perpetual remembrance of the dearly departed. A fine example of this is a black-framed shadow box containing two items in remembrance of the Glessners’ intimate friend, Theodore Thomas.

Theodore Thomas was regarded as one of the finest conductors of his day, and in October 1891, gave the inaugural concert for his Chicago Orchestra, which survives today as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Glessners were intimately involved from the start, John Glessner being one of a group of Chicago businessmen who served as guarantors - covering the annual expenses of the orchestra to make up the shortfall from ticket sales. The Glessners and Thomases developed a deep friendship, so much so, that in the 1890s, the Thomases purchased property in Bethlehem, New Hampshire and built their summer home, just a couple of miles from the Glessners’ summer home, The Rocks.

Theodore Thomas realized his long time dream with the dedication of Orchestra Hall on December 14, 1904. He conducted for less than two weeks before being taken seriously ill. On Wednesday January 4, 1905 at 5:50am he breathed his last, passing away in his home at 52 E. Bellevue Place. The Glessners were the first to see him after he passed, Frances Glessner noting in her journal, “I have never seen death more solemn, more majestic.” George Glessner came soon after to take a post-mortem photograph, which he printed himself and presented to the widow, Rose Fay Thomas.

The funeral took place at St. James Episcopal Church on Friday January 6th. John Glessner served as an honorary pallbearer, his son George and son-in-law Blewett Lee serving as ushers. Rose Thomas asked Frances Glessner to take charge of arranging the numerous floral tributes, both at the church, and at the memorial concert to follow. Frances Glessner noted in her journal, “After the funeral we ladies stood on the steps leading to the altar and protected the flowers. The crowd serged up toward the altar, but I do not believe a leaf was touched of anything.” The flowers were then taken to Orchestra Hall, where Frances Glessner supervised their arrangement on the stage, prior to the memorial concert for season ticket holders, featuring works by Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, and closing with Richard Strauss’ tone poem, Death and Transfiguration. Rose Thomas and Theodore’s two sons, Hector and Hermann, sat with the Glessners in their box, Box M, during the concert.

The body of Theodore Thomas was taken to the receiving vault at Graceland Cemetery. In March, his widow accompanied the body to Boston, where it was interred in the Fay family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. By this time, she had given up her Bellevue Place home, and had moved to an apartment at 2000 S. Indiana Avenue, just two blocks south of the Glessner home.

In recognition of the close friendship between the Glessner and Thomas families, Rose Thomas presented Frances Glessner with a treasured memorial piece. Framed by Marshall Field & Co., the black shadow box is lined in black velvet and contains a wood baton, one of the last used by Theodore Thomas, held in place with purple ribbons. A preserved palm frond, from the funeral flowers, is displayed beneath the baton. The shadow box was hung in the hall outside the Glessners’ bedroom, where they would see it daily, a fitting reminder of their good friend, and the man who founded the orchestra that became one of the finest in the United States.

September 2019 - The Baby’s Opera by Walter Crane

Among the thousands of books owned by the Glessners is this copy of The Baby’s Opera published in 1877 by Walter Crane, with engravings by Edmund Evans. The poor condition of the book, combined with an interesting photo of Fanny Glessner in her playroom at the family’s summer estate, show that this book and its illustrations would have figured prominently in her childhood.

Walter Crane (1845-1915) was a prominent English artist who is considered one of the most important and influential children’s book creators and illustrators, along with Kate Greenaway. Crane’s illustrations came to be synonymous with children’s stories and nursery rhymes for decades. An equally important contributor to the Arts & Crafts Movement, his artistry extended to paintings, ceramics, wallpapers, and other decorative arts. Crane visited the United States in late 1891, and Frances Glessner records visiting an exhibit of his pictures at the museum in Boston in early December. By the end of the month, Crane was in Chicago where his pictures were exhibited at the Art Institute, lecturing for the 20th Century Club and being feted in various receptions at which Frances Glessner was involved. An ardent socialist, his political views, and his support of the Haymarket “anarchists” in particular, cast a shadow over his U.S. visit.

The Glessners’ copy of The Baby’s Opera is missing many of its pages. An article published by Clarence Cook in the April 1877 issue of Scribner’s Monthly entitled “Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks” provides a plausible explanation. Cook praised Walter Crane’s picture books, including The Baby’s Opera, which had just been published. Noting that the pictures are all together too beautiful to be enjoyed only by children, he made the following suggestion, “Now, a way to use these pictures so that all could enjoy them would be to paste them upon a folding screen, or in the panels of the nursery and bedroom doors, or in the panels of a wardrobe, or cabinet.”

No photos survive showing Fanny Glessner’s childhood bedroom, but that fact that all of the full page illustrations are missing in The Baby’s Opera would support the idea that her mother removed the illustrations and followed Cook’s advice in decorating her daughter’s room. Frances Glessner owned a copy of Cook’s iconic House Beautiful, published in 1878, containing articles previously published in Scribner’s Monthly.

This idea is further supported by a photo of Fanny’s playroom at The Rocks, the family’s summer estate in New Hampshire. Fanny' is seen relaxing in a hammock in the middle of the room. A decorative frieze paper on the walls, upon examination, is in fact a commercially printed wallpaper border featuring six of the illustrations from The Baby’s Opera: Jack & Jill, I had a little nut tree, Where are going to my pretty maid?, How does my lady’s garden grow?, Here we go round the mulberry bush, and Little Bo Peep. Wallpapers utilizing Crane’s illustrations are specifically recommended for nurseries in a book entitled Decoration & Furniture of Town Houses authored by the British architect Robert Edis. Frances Glessner owned a copy of the book which was published in 1881, two years before she decorated Fanny’s playroom. It appears Fanny may have seen these illustrations on a daily basis during her childhood.

The Baby’s Opera is displayed in Fanny Glessner’s bedroom beside the photo of her playroom at The Rocks.

August 2019 - Telescopic picture of the moon

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, we have recently returned a print of the moon to its original location in the cork alcove off of the library.  The chromolithograph was produced in 1880 by Henry Harrison, the artist who created the original painting based on photographs of the moon taken through a telescope. 

Henry Harrison (c. 1844 – 1923) was an artist and amateur astronomer.  Based in Newark, New Jersey, he was best known for his portraits of New Jersey politicians.  He also extensively studied the moon and created a series of six paintings of the moon in different phases, chromolithographic copies of which were made by Mayer Merkel & Ottmann, one of America’s largest lithographic firms. Prints sold for $30.  Each print was accompanied by a handbook which contained a large fold-out outline map identifying each crater, plain, and mountain depicted in the print, and then detailed information giving the official name and designation, and the estimated size of each feature. 

Plate I shows the moon in its first phase when it is three days old.  The moon as depicted, is 18 inches in diameter, the full print being a little over 24 inches square.  As noted in a review of the print and booklet from 1881 in the Selenographic Journal:
“The picture forms a wonderfully faithful representation of the appearance of the moon, as seen with a power of about 80 in a reflecting telescope of some five inches aperture, and in this respect stands before all other attempts which have hitherto been made.”

John Glessner had an ongoing interest in the moon.  His library also contains a leaflet written in 1925 by Oliver C. Farrington, Curator of Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History.  Entitled simply The Moon, this scholarly analysis of the moon’s surface is accompanied by a photo of the Field Museum’s plaster model of the moon.  Measuring 19 feet in diameter, and composed of 116 sections of plaster on a metal and wood frame, it was the largest model of the moon in the world at the time.  A small penciled notation inside the back cover by John Glessner notes that he read the leaflet on February 14, 1927. 

July 2019 - Fireplace grate from Alexander Hamilton’s Grange

On special exhibit through Sunday August 25, 2019, in recognition of Hamilton: The Exhibition (on nearby Northerly Island), is a brass fireplace grate from Alexander Hamilton’s home, The Grange, located in Manhattan, New York. The Glessners acquired numerous Colonial-era fireplace fittings for their Prairie Avenue home in the 1880s. This piece, however, was not acquired until about 1898, and was most likely used at their summer estate, The Rocks, in New Hampshire, the main house of which was being substantially remodeled and enlarged at that time.

Hamilton Grange is operated by the National Park Service as a National Memorial. It is currently located in St. Nicholas Park in Manhattan, the third location of the house. Hamilton built his home, designed by architect John McComb Jr., on his 32 acre estate in upper Manhattan in 1802, just two years before he was fatally wounded by vice president Aaron Burr during a duel. The house remained in the Hamilton family for 30 years, but was condemned in 1889, at which time it was rescued and moved by St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. It was purchased by the National Park Foundation in 1962 and moved to its present site in 2008, where it was restored to the period of Alexander Hamilton’s residency, 1802-1804.

In December 1897, the Glessners received a photo of the piece from Edwin B. Sheldon, who had acquired the grate in 1884 from William H. De Forrest, at that time owner of the Grange. On the reverse of the photo, Sheldon provided the dimensions as well as the provenance, noting that it had been used in the library of the Grange.

The overall form of the piece is typical of fireplace grates of the period and is made of brass with a central iron basket to hold the coal. Two pairs of urn finials decorate the top, and pierced work highlights the front of the removable ash tray below.

The exhibit also includes the two volume set, The Private Journal of Aaron Burr, 1808-1812, edited by William K. Bixby in 1905. Bixby came into possession of the original manuscript of Burr’s journal, kept during the years he was in exile in Europe following Hamilton’s death. A letter pasted into the front of Volume I notes that only 250 copies of the published journal were printed and distributed by Bixby to libraries, colleges, and personal friends. John Glessner, who had met Bixby several years earlier during a trip to Cuba, received set number 151.

June 2019 - Turkish Coffeepot

This coffeepot, measuring thirteen inches in height, has long occupied a place of honor on the top shelf of the sideboard in the dining room. The simple and elegant form displays Frances Glessner’s interest in beautiful form over elaborate decoration, also well-represented in two adjacent pieces of English creamware (see entry for March 2017 - Creamware Punch Jug). This interest is reinforced by the fact that other similar pieces, including those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum, both have additional silver decoration which is omitted here.

The piece was produced in the early 1880s by the Gorham Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island, and was part of a line of patinated copper wares introduced in 1881 and made until about 1885. This line was developed in direct response to a growing interest in all things Japanese, including metalwork, which became available after Commodore Matthew Perry established trade with Japan in 1854. The coffeepot also well represents the Aesthetic Movement, which freely melded various stylistic sources deemed “Oriental” in a single object. In this case, the influence of Japan is combined with the overall form which replicates a Turkish ewer, appropriate in that it would have been used to serve Turkish coffee, which became popular during the late 19th century. Frances Glessner’s monogrammed gold and white china, and her blue and white china for her Monday Morning Reading Class luncheons, both include demitasse cups, which were used to serve Turkish coffee.

The coffeepot was hammered to a smooth finish and was then patinated to a rich wine-red color, which imitated not only Japanese metalwork, but lacquered wood as well. The patination was achieved by heating the copper to produce a thin film of copper oxide or cuprite on the surface, which was then polished and then waxed or lacquered for protection. The die-rolled silver band at center features sunflowers, another popular motif of the Aesthetic Movement. Silver is also used for the rim, lid, hinge, and handle, the latter with ivory insulators at top and bottom to prevent heat from transferring to the handle.

May 2019 - Rolling Bear Cub Sculpture

This charming bronze sculpture, measuring just 3-1/2 inches in height, occupies a place of honor on Frances Glessner’s side of the partner’s desk in the library. Acquired about 1910, the piece may have had special significance as it would have reminded her of the bears which were frequently seen at her summer estate, The Rocks, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Known as “Rolling Bear Cub,” the sculpture is the work of Anna Hyatt Huntington, a prominent New York sculptor and one of the first female sculptors to enjoy a national and international reputation. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1876, she was the daughter of Alpheus Hyatt, a professor at both Harvard University and MIT. Specializing in zoology, Hyatt provided his daughter with the opportunity to pursue her interest in animals and animal anatomy. She studied animals in close detail at zoos and circuses and studied with several prominent sculptors including Gutzon Borglum (sculptor of Mt. Rushmore).

During the first decades of the 20th century, Hyatt used her careful study of animals to create numerous animal sculptures, both full size, and in small scale, as is the case with Frances Glessner’s piece. In 1915, she achieved considerable recognition for her sculpture of Joan of Arc, located on New York City’s Riverside Drive, one of numerous equestrian sculptures she created in her lifetime. In 1932, she became one of the first women artists to be elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Hyatt married Archer Milton Huntington, who inherited considerable wealth from his railroad magnate father. Together, Anna and Archer Huntington founded Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, donated 800 acres for a state park in Connecticut (in memory of his father), and went on to found more than a dozen museums and wildlife preserves.

Rolling Bear Cub depicts a young cub playing with his feet and shows Hyatt’s ability to depict both emotion and realism in her works. It was made by the Gorham Manufacturing Company and was retailed through Spaulding & Co. in Chicago. It is stamped “38” indicating that this is number 38 of a total of 138 that were cast.

April 2019 - Two-handled Copper Jug

This large copper jug, measuring nine inches in height, displays all the trademarks of American Arts and Crafts metalwork. Its inclusion in the Glessner House collection reinforces Frances Glessner’s interest in the movement, both as collector and craftswoman. Family lore connects the piece with metalsmith Annibale Fogliata, however its somewhat crude form would suggest that it is the work of one of his students at Hull-House, founded by Jane Addams in 1889 in the center of a crowded immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. The simple form, consisting of a bulbous body with two riveted handles, is similar to Netilat Yadayim cups used by those of the Jewish faith for ritual hand washing, indicating it might have been the work of a Eastern European Jewish immigrant, of which there were many residing in the Hull-House neighborhood.

Fogliata was born in Milan, Italy in 1867 and by the turn of the 20th century was living in England, where he exhibited a bronze and enameled triptych at the New Gallery in 1903. Soon after, he traveled to the United States, signing a declaration of intention to become a permanent U.S. resident. He joined others at Hull-House, including Englishman George Twose and Frank Hazenplug, a recent graduate of Chicago’s Art Institute, in teaching students and young adults the basics of metalwork, usually drawing designs for the students to copy.

The Hull-House Shops, located at 800 S. Halsted Street, were started in the late 1890s, and complemented other activities at Hull-House including meetings of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society (founded 1897), and the Labor Museum, where immigrants used traditional implements to continue crafting implements from their native countries. Most of the metalwork produced by the Hull-House Shops was of copper, and the pieces were not marked. Clients would have included individuals such as Frances Glessner “who sympathized with the humanitarian ideals of the settlement.” (Chicago Metalsmiths, Sharon Darling, 1977)

Fogliata crafted a number of pieces purchased by Frances Glessner, including jewelry, picture frames, and trays, prior to her retaining his as an instructor in silver work in November 1905. Within two years, however, he had moved to New York, where it appears he remained for the rest of his life, being last identified as a steel engraver in the 1930 census.

March 2019 - The Story of a House

One of the most important objects to return to Glessner House in recent years is an original copy of The Story of a House. Purchased in March 2019, the copy is one of three created by John J. Glessner in 1923 as a record of the house at 1800 Prairie Avenue.  This particular copy was presented to his daughter, Frances Glessner Lee, in October 1923, who subsequently gifted it to her daughter, Martha Lee Batchelder, in December 1954. 

The leather-bound volume, which measures 12” by 14.5”, features 25 typewritten pages by John Glessner detailing the construction of the house, working with the architect H. H. Richardson, and stories about the furnishings and the various social events that took place through the years.  Reduced copies of the original floorplans are included, as are dozens of images of the exterior and interior of the house, taken by the prominent architectural photography firm of Kaufmann and Fabry. 

The photographs are an important record of the house and have been used to guide the restoration of several rooms.  The two photographs of Fanny’s Bedroom in the book are the only known images of that room and were an essential part of the documentation as the restoration project was planned.  Additionally, the volume contains the only known image of Abingdon Abbey, used by Richardson as the “keynote” of the design of the house.  The original framed photograph was left in the house after the Glessners died and was later lost.

John Glessner was a serious historian, so the preparation of the volume is consistent with his desire to leave behind an accurate record for future generations.  The timing, however, seems to relate to the changing character of the neighborhood.  The year after completing The Story of a House, he and his wife wrote to their children noting that the changes on Prairie Avenue might result in the need to leave their beloved home.  Houses were being razed or converted to boarding houses and business offices.  Additionally, Richardson’s only other Chicago house, for the MacVeagh family on Lake Shore Drive, had just been demolished.

The Story of a House remains a valuable record of an internationally significant home, in addition to being a personal and loving gift from parents to their children, “for whose pleasure and profit it has been my pleasure and their mother’s to do many things, and especially to give them a happy home and a happy childhood, and to fit them for the responsibilities of living.”

Reprints of the book, funded by a generous grant from the Graham Foundation, are available for purchase in the gift shop.

February 2019 - Triptych frame by Isaac Scott

One of the most elaborate frames designed by Isaac Scott for the Glessners is this stunning triptych frame in the Neo-Gothic style. Featuring rows of intricately carved details and floral finials in a composite material over the wood frame base, the design is further enlivened the brass fittings. The elaborateness of the frame is not surprising, given that it was specifically designed to hold three of the oldest and most significant engravings in the Glessners’ collection.

The central engraving depicts a seated Madonna holding the baby Jesus at her right hip.  She rests on clouds, and a halo forms an arc around her head.  The piece, dated 1516, is the work of the important Italian engraver Marcantonio Raimondi, and is based on artwork by Raffaello Sanzio (better known as Raphael). Raimondi, also known simply as Marcantonio, was born about 1480, and by 1510 had moved to Rome where he joined the artistic circle surrounding Raphael. He was the first important print maker to focus primarily on copying paintings, and was a key figure in the rise of the reproductive print. He spent much of his career copying the works of Raphael and died around 1534.

The engraving on the left depicts St. Jerome, an Illyrian Latin Christian priest, who lived from c. 347 to 420.  St. Jerome left extensive writings, most significantly his translation of the Bible into Latin, known as the Vulgate.  In this engraving, he is shown kneeling before a tree with a crucifix hanging from its branches.  A lion sleeps in front of him, a reference to the story that he tamed a lion by healing its paw.  Dated 1516 at the upper left, the engraving is the work of the Dutch master Lucas van Leyden. Born in 1494, he was one of the first Dutch genre painters, and was known as a skilled engraver. he died in 1533.

On the right side of the frame is an engraving made about 1490, that depicts John the Baptist holding a book and a lamb in his left hand.  This engraving was created by Martin Schongauer (c.1440-1491) whose initials are shown at the bottom center of the print.  Schongauer was the most important German printmaker prior to Albrecht Durer, and had a large output which was sold throughout Europe.  The Glessners paid $45.00 for the Schongauer piece in November 1880, the equivalent of more than $1,070 today.

The triptych is displayed in Fanny’s bedroom which opened to the public on March 27, 2019.

January 2019 - Trinket box by William Hair Haseler

One of the loveliest decorative objects in the house is also one of the smallest. The oval shaped trinket or pin box measures just 2-1/4" inches in width and one inch in height. The piece was crafted by the prominent English silversmith, William Hair Haseler, and was acquired by Frances Glessner about 1907, just a couple of years after she started crafting her own silver objects.

Haseler was born in Birmingham, England in 1821 or 1822. In 1870, when nearly 50 years of age, he founded the company, William Hair Haseler, which specialized in gold and silver work, and jewelry. Five years later, Arthur Lasenby Liberty (1843-1917) opened a small shop on Regent Street in London. Focusing on exotic goods from Japan and the Far East, his business thrived and he became a leading merchant to the upper classes. In time, it became the most fashionable place to shop in London, and his wares expanded to included everything from fabrics and clothing to furniture and wallpaper. He was an important proponent of the Art Nouveau style, so much so that the term “Stile Liberty” became the accepted term for the style in Italy. Liberty formed relationships with many leading English designers. In 1898, Liberty and Haseler created a formal partnership to launch a line of silver known as Cymric, which displayed the Art Nouveau styling for which Liberty was known.

The Glessner piece features delicate wire work in a rope motif encircling the base, which is supported by four petite bun feet. The most striking feature of the box is the removable lid which displays rich blue and green enamel work set within an Art Nouveau frame with four silver hearts (or heart shaped leaves). A series of marks on the underside of the base include Haseler’s initials, a mark for the city of Birmingham, England, a “lion passant” certifying the piece as sterling (930/1000), and a lower case “h” indicating the year of production, 1907.

William Hair Haseler died in December 1909, but his company continued its partnership with Liberty until 1926. Haseler’s pieces can be found in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as many other museums throughout England.

December 2018 - Colonel Carter’s Christmas

On November 29, 1903, Frances Glessner noted in her journal, “Hopkinson Smith sent me a copy of his latest book ‘Colonel Carter’s Christmas.’ In it he alludes to our carrying the embers from our old home to the new.” Smith was a long-time friend of the Glessners and a frequent guest at their Prairie Avenue home when visiting Chicago.

Born in 1838, he was named after his ancestor Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Smith was a prominent American author, artist, and engineer. His first popular book was Colonel Carter of Cartersville, published in 1891, of which the Christmas volume was a sequel. His novels Tom Grogan and Caleb West were the best selling books in the United States in 1896 and 1898, respectively. He was also well respected as an engineer, completing major projects in and around New York City, the most significant being the foundation for the Statue of Liberty. An avid artist, he enjoyed sketching trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, so it seems likely that this is where he may have come to know the Glessners.

The reference to the embers noted in the journal is found on page 116 of Colonel Carter’s Christmas relating the character Aunt Nancy bringing a Christmas tree to Col. Carter. Smith writes, “The bringing of a tree from her own home at Carter Hall to cheer the Colonel’s temporary resting place in Bedford Place, was to her like the bringing of a live coal from old and much loved embers with which to start a fire on a new hearth.”

Smith based that reference on a story he had heard from Frances Glessner about the move into her new Prairie Avenue home in December 1887. Frances Glessner recorded the story in her journal for December 4th: “Today we took a carriage and went to the old home. We kindled a fire in the library and I lighted a lantern which I had carried over and brought the light home - then from that I lighted a fire here in the library. Professor Swing read a few verses from the 5th chapter of Matthew and made a beautiful prayer. Now I feel that the house is dedicated. And so ends a very happy day and prosperous beginning.”

November 2018 - De Morgan Tiles

On November 7, 2018, the master bedroom at Glessner House reopened with the original William De Morgan designed fireplace tiles back on display after an absence of eighty years. The tiles, selected by the Glessners as their new home was being built in 1887, were removed in the late 1930s after their deaths by their daughter, Frances Glessner Lee. She was building an addition to her home at The Rocks estate in New Hampshire at the time, and had a fireplace designed for her library/office specifically to receive them.

The tiles were designed by William De Morgan, who also designed a second set of tiles for one of the guest bedrooms, as well as several decorative objects displayed in the house. De Morgan was born in London in 1839 and after studying at the Royal Academy, began an important collaboration with William Morris, designing ceramics for the firm. He opened his own firm a few years later, and began focusing largely on the design and production of tiles, many reflecting his interest in sixteenth century designs from the Turkish region of Iznik (the dining room fireplace tiles at Glessner House are representative of this design, see Object of the Month for April 2017). Many of his best known works were created during the 1880s when his shop was located at Merton Abbey, including the tiles for the Glessners, and it was during this time that tiles were first produced in the larger eight-inch size.

The thirty-five tiles remained at Lee’s New Hampshire cottage home following her death in 1962. Her daughter, Martha Lee Batchelder, continued to occupy the home during the summers, and had expressed a desire for them to be returned to Glessner House one day, but died unexpectedly in 1994 before her wishes could be placed in writing. It was not until 2015, when the cottage was acquired by the Society for the Preservation of New Hampshire Forests, that plans were finally made for their return. The tiles were carefully cut away from the fireplace. During the process of cleaning off the accumulated mortar, marks on the back were discovered indicating how they had been placed on the original fireplace. Nearly two-thirds of the tiles still bore their original mark, allowing the tiles to go back in exactly the location they had been set originally.

Today the tiles look right at home in the master bedroom, beautifully complimenting the original carpet in the room, and displaying the Glessners interest in the English Arts and Crafts movement. The rich blue color, which De Morgan copied from the early Iznik examples he admired, is as vibrant today as when Frances Glessner first saw the completed fireplace in December 1887.

October 2018 - Invitation to Queen Victoria’s birthday

On May 24, 1893, the British Royal Commissioners and the Commissioners for the British Colonies for the World’s Columbian Exposition held a banquet in honor of Queen Victoria’s 74th birthday. The banquet was attended by British citizens and leading Chicago businessmen, including John J. Glessner.

The menu consisted of the following courses:
Caviar
Little Neck Clams, Olives, and Radishes (with Haut Sauternes)
Clear Green Turtle
Boiled Kennebec Salmon, Hollandaise Sauce, Cucumbers
Roast Saddle of Spring Lamb, Green Peas (with Moet & Chandon, Dry Imperial)
Braised Sweetbreads, Asparagus
Maraschino Punch
Broiled Golden Plover, Mushrooms (with Chateau Grand Puy Lacoaste)
Assorted Cakes, Fruits, Strawberry Ice Cream, Camembert and Roquefort
Coffee, Cigars, and Liquers

The Chicago Tribune gave the following report of the site of the celebration:
“One loyal subject for each year of her reign celebrated the seventy-fourth anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria of England by banqueting at the Virginia Hotel last night.  Under the auspices of the British Royal Commissioners and the Commissioners for the British Colonies at the World’s Columbian Exposition the banquet was given.  From facades to the pillared entrances the Virginia was decked in the ensigns of Britain.  Over the main entrance to the hotel were looped two Union Jacks.  Inside the hall music and perfumed floated on a sea of color.  All the perfumed buds and blossoms that summer holds were woven in graceful designs about the lighted hall.  Back of the main table and overlooking the entire hall was placed a life-sized portrait of the honored Queen.  Above it hung a silken canopy decked with white blossoms and illumined with waxen tapers tinted and hooded in harmonizing color.  Silken ensigns interwoven formed the frame of this picture, which was the centerpiece of all the decorations.  Upon the main table, on either side of the presiding toastmaster, Walter H. Harris, was a floral picture.  American beauty roses made the red for the national design and violets for the blue background, where great stars of white narcissus were set with a star for every State. The tables were formed in a hollow square, and here the simplicity of decoration was marked.  At intervals of a few feet Sevres vases were filled with great bunches of American beauty roses.  No other flower held a place in the table decorations.”

The feasting concluded at 10:10pm at which point the British Royal Commissioner, Walter H. Harris, began the “post prandial exercises” with a toast to The Queen.   “God Save the Queen” was then played three times, each time followed by “cheers given with a hearty will.”  This was followed by toasts to President Cleveland and the World’s Columbian Exposition after which Lyman J. Gage gave a short address focusing on the close alliance between the United States and Great Britain.  Additional toasts were given to the foreign commissioners, Chicago, the press, and finally the host before the assemblage dispersed for the evening.

NOTE:  The site of the banquet, the Virginia Hotel, was located at the northwest corner of Rush and Ohio streets.  Completed in 1891, the 10-story brick building had been designed by architect Clinton J. Warren.  Leander J. McCormick had lived on the site since 1863, and was also the builder and owner of the hotel, where he died in 1900.  It was demolished in May 1932 to make way for a parking lot.  In 1999, the firm of Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates designed the current multi-level parking garage on the site.

September 2018 - Albarello

This vase, measuring 7.25” in height, is designed in the shape of an albarello, an early form of apothecary jar originating in the Middle East, and dating back to the early 15th century in Europe.  Typical features include the concave shape, and the top lip, which would secure parchment or leather tied to protect the contents.   This piece was made in 1876 by Josaphat Tortat in Blois, a region in central France known for its fine faience - tin-glazed pottery with a pale buff earthenware body.  Tortat was known for embracing the Renaissance era and freely interpreting its style, mixing historical decorations with more modern details.  The overall color of the piece is a rich yellow, highlighted with white, gold, and brown, with additional colors within the two medallions.

The medallions incorporate the emblem and initial of King Francis I of France, who reigned from 1515 to 1547.  He is remembered as a significant patron of the arts, ushering in the Renaissance era in France, and attracting Italian artists to work on his various chateaus including Chambord.  Leonardo di Vinci came to France at his request, bringing with him the Mona Lisa. 

The emblem shown above depicts a salamander breathing fire, with additional flames above.  The salamander represented the man who never lost the peace of his soul, and was also identified with Christ, who baptized the world with flames.  The second medallion on the piece features the capital letter F set within a crown. 

 The Glessners actively began collecting “bric-a-brac” around 1876 and this is a good representative sample of the type of French ceramics that appealed to their tastes.

August 2018 - Lancelot and Elaine Tiles

Perched high atop the rail in the main hall, a set of five hand-painted tiles tells the story of Lancelot and Elaine, as told in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Lancelot and Elaine, part of his collection Idylls of the King, a copy of which the Glessners owned.  They acquired the tiles to adorn their Isaac Scott-designed library fireplace mantel installed in their previous home in March 1877.  When they moved to their Prairie Avenue home a decade later, the mantel was reinstalled at their New Hampshire summer estate, The Rocks, and the set of tiles was placed on the main hall rail, where it remains today.

The tiles were produced by Minton, Hollins & Co., located in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England.  The artist for the series is believed to be Henry George Alexander Holiday (1839-1927), a multi-talented British artist considered to be an important member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a landscape painter, stained glass designer, illustrator, and sculptor, and designed and painted tiles in the early part of his career. His best known tile series depicts Hans Christian Andersen’s story of The Little Mermaid.

The tragic love poem begins with Lancelot meeting Elaine and her brother (shown above).  Elaine instantly falls in love with Lancelot, who agrees to wear Elaine’s favor in a jousting competition.  In the second tile, a victorious Lancelot returns from the tournament with a lance wound.  Sir Gawaine gives Elaine the victor’s diamond, informing her that Lancelot had fought for her.  The third tile shows Elaine following her confession of love to Lancelot, whom she has restored to health.  Lancelot cares for Elaine, but cannot put aside his deep love for Guinivere, and refuses Elaine’s proposal of marriage.  Elaine mutters “Him or death, death or him” and collapses.  In the fourth tile, Elaine’s family tells her of Lancelot’s love for Guinivere, and a despairing Elaine wills herself to die.  In the final tile, Elaine’s lifeless body is being prepared for burial by King Arthur with Queen Guinivere by his side.  Lancelot confesses to Elaine in death that his accomplishments mean nothing. 

July 2018 - John Glessner's cane

Among the more utilitarian objects at Glessner House is a plain wooden cane, which hangs on a hook in John Glessner's dressing room.  The cane is ebonized, except for the several knot holes along the length, and the handle which is worn from years of use.  A silver band near the top of the cane bears the inscription "John Jacob Glessner After May 1905."  The meaning of the inscription was not fully understand until earlier this year when a large book of genealogical materials, gathered by John Glessner between 1881 and 1929, was donated by one of his great-grandchildren.  John Glessner recorded the story of the cane as follows:

"On June 18, 1905, I got at Zanesville, my father's cane, a plain, unpretentious solid piece of hickory wood with curved handle, the same cane shown in photograph on next page. (Note: the photo, a copy of an old daguerreotype, shows John Glessner's grandparents, Jacob and Margaret (Young) Glessner)  This cane had been my grandfather Glessner's, and used by him for I don't know how many years before his death in 1865 - certainly a good many.  It then came into my father's possession, and had been his since that time, though he rarely used a cane in walking until a few years before his death but this is the cane he used. (Note: John Glessner's father, also named Jacob, died May 24, 1905)  Now that it is mine I shall have some metal bands put on to tell this history.  I wish my son to have it after me, and his son after him if he will care for such a plain old fashioned stick.  J. J. Glessner"

Sadly, John Glessner's hopes for the cane did not come true as his son George died seven years before he did.  The cane was passed down to his daughter Frances Glessner Lee after his death, and thence to her daughter Martha Lee Batchelder.  It was returned to the house in 1995 following her passing.  Today it represents John Glessner's deep interest in his family history, and his desire for that history to be preserved for future generations.

June 2018 - Askos Pitcher

This heavy bronze pitcher, measuring 9-1/2 inches in height, is one of the many objects the Glessners purchased during their one and only trip to Europe in early 1890.  It occupied a place of honor on the partner's desk in the library, where it remains today.  

The piece is based on an ancient bottle made to hold water or wine that was originally made from the stomach of a goat.  These pitchers were copied in other materials as far back as the Roman period.  A similar bronze askos is held in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy, which the Glessners visited the same day that they purchased this reproduction.  

Frances Glessner noted in her journal on March 9, 1890:
"At the Museum, we saw the original Narcissus, Hercules Silencus, and Bacchus which we have reproductions of at home - and many other most interesting things.  The Pompeian mosaics and frescoes were wonderfully beautiful.  Two boys came up to us bowing and touching their hats profusely.  We recognized one as a young fellow whom we met in the bronze factory yesterday.  The other was the son of the owner of the factory and wanted to take us to the show rooms.  We asked him to walk over the museum with us for a while first, which he did, taking us at once to the most celebrated works.  Then we went with him to the atelier and bought a bust of Plato, one of Seneca, a Dante and a Pompeian pitcher."

The piece consists of a large bulbous body, with olive branches encircling the lower portion.  The handle features an upright panther with his front paws set upon the lip of the pitcher which is wrapped with two snakes whose tails hang down from beneath the paws.  A thick bronze patina has been applied to give the appearance of great age.  Such objects were produced in large numbers for American tourists like the Glessners who visited Europe and were anxious to bring home reproductions of pieces they had seen in various museums.

May 2018 - Paderewski portrait by Edward Burne-Jones

It is evident from Frances Glessner's journal that she was quite entranced with Ignacy Paderewski, arguably the greatest pianist of the late 19th century.  She first heard him in concert in December 1891 while visiting Boston, and again in January 1892 when he performed with the Chicago Orchestra, led by Theodore Thomas.  On March 4, 1893, however, she and her husband were invited to an intimate dinner at the home of Theodore and Rose Thomas to meet Paderewski, following yet another appearance with the Chicago Orchestra.  She noted in her journal that "Paderewski has very remarkable eyes - is very sympathetic, intelligent, agreeable - full of life and fun."

When he returned to Chicago the next month, he accepted an invitation to dine with the Glessners at 1800 Prairie Avenue.  The evening was a huge success, and before departing, Frances Glessner noted that "he thanked me for our part in creating the right sort of public sentiment in art and music here."  Soon after the dinner, Frances acquired a platinotype portrait of Paderewski by the printmaker and engraver Frederick Hollyer, based on the portrait by Edward Burne-Jones.  A platinotype is a type of photograph perfected by Hollyer when he photographed drawings.  The paper was impregnated with light sensitive iron compounds, and after exposure, a fine layer of platinum was deposited on the exposed areas by means of a chemical reaction.  It produced a finely detailed copy that was virtually indistinguishable from the original drawing.

In The Paderewski Memoirs, published in 1939 by Paderewski and Mary Lawton, he noted how the portrait came into being:

"I was driving gaily along in a hansom cab one day on my way to St. John's Wood, when suddenly I saw a gentleman approaching.  He was walking slowly along and even at that distance he radiated an unusual kind of power and nobility.  He had the expression of an apostle, I thought.  Instinctively I raised my hat from the depths of my hansom cab and saluted his dignity.  I did not know then that it was Burne-Jones, the great portrait painter.  A few days later I was taken by a friend to his studio where he made four or five silver-point sketches of me, one of which acquired a very wide popularity.  It was done in two hours - it was marvelous.  I remember that he drew very rapidly, even violently.  It became one of his most famous drawings and was known everywhere."

Burne-Jones also remembered the meeting, dating it to 1890, and referring to the person he noted (and only later learned was Paderewski) as "an Archangel with a splendid halo of golden hair."

The portrait was given to Paderewski for his signature and on May 8, 1893, Frances Glessner noted in her journal, "Paderewski wrote on the beautiful photograph of Burne-Jones portrait of him, 'Mrs. Frances M. Glessner in kind remembrance, I. J. Paderewski, Chicago, May - 1893.'"  It was framed by Isaac Scott and hung at 1800 Prairie the next month.  It continues to hang in the hallway outside the master bedroom, a fitting reminder of the great Polish pianist and statesman who visited and enchanted his hostess.

April 2018 - Hints on Household Taste

Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and other Details was one of the most important books in the history of 19th century domestic design.  The book was authored by Charles Locke Eastlake (1836-1906), a British architect and furniture designer.  He was one of the principle exponents of the Modern Gothic (a.k.a. Gothic Revival) style during the mid- to late-19th century, and also helped to popularized William Morris's notions of decorative arts.  Hints was first published in 1868 and went through many editions, including the first U.S. edition in 1872.  It served as the basic source for philosophy of design for professionals and homeowners alike.  

The Glessners purchased their copy of Hints in September 1875.  That is the same month in which they attended the Inter-State Industrial Exposition, held in an enormous glass enclosed building on the present site of the Art Institute of Chicago.  It was at the Exposition that they met two men who significantly influenced their growing interest in furniture design and collecting bric-a-brac.  The first was Edward Stanley Waters (1837-1916) who came to Chicago in 1869 to open a preparatory school for boys known as the Harvard School.  He lectured on art and history and by the mid-1870s gave up teaching to manage bric-a-brac shops in Chicago and New York.  The Glessners purchased many pieces from him through the years and he remained a life long friend.

The second individual was Isaac Elwood Scott (1845-1920), a Pennsylvania native who came to Chicago in the early 1870s.  A talented woodcarver and designer, Scott had several pieces of "art furniture" on exhibit at the 1875 Exposition which the Glessners saw and liked.  Soon after, they ordered a near-exact copy of a bookcase displayed at the Exposition from Scott which launched a decades-long client-craftsman relationship and close friendship.  Many of Scott's furniture pieces, including the bookcase, reflect the design philosophy espoused in Eastlake's writings in Hints.

The Glessners' copy of Hints was published in 1874 by James R. Osgood and Company in Boston.  In addition to the text, it contains numerous illustrations by Eastlake, as well as a number of color plates depicting encaustic tile and wood parquet floors, and wallpaper designs, the latter printed on actual wallpaper stock.  The book no doubt became a regular reference for the Glessners as they began to make over their Washington Street home in the late 1870s, incorporating furniture, moldings, and mantels by Isaac Scott, all of which reflect the design tenets contained in Eastlake's influential book.  

March 2018 - Hand-painted Tile by Helen Macbeth

This 6" x 6" hand-painted tile, one of two presented as a gift to Frances Glessner from her sister Helen Macbeth, was and is displayed on the plate rail in the main hall, a place of prominence indicating that it was a special piece for the recipient.  Set within a delicately carved frame designed and executed by Isaac Scott, it is a prime example of the Arts and Crafts objects that Frances Glessner used to decorate her Prairie Avenue home.

Helen Macbeth was born in Ohio on January 18, 1838 and was the second eldest of six children, her sister Frances being ten years younger.  From an early age, Helen displayed artistic talent which was encouraged by her parents.  In addition to traditional easel painting, which she learned from various local artists, she also learned to paint on a variety of media, including china and ceramics.  China painting swept the United States in the 1870s, with thousands of women learning to paint a variety of utilitarian and decorative objects for use in their homes, to give as gifts, or to sell as a means of self-support. 

It is interesting to note that two of the early pioneers in the field were both from Ohio as well.  Maria Longworth Nichols learned to paint china in Cincinnati, and went on to found Rookwood Pottery.  One of her chief rivals in the field was Mary Louise McLaughlin, a student of Benn Pittman at the Cincinnati School of Design.  That School exhibited at the Women's Pavilion at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition (which the Glessners attended), giving china painting broad visibility.  Within a few years, McLaughlin published two books on the subject, and china painting clubs sprung up around the country.  Imported and domestically produced white "blanks" were readily available for the artisans to apply their creations.  Additionally, portable coal- and gas-fired kilns were developed during this time, meaning that the women could also fire their pieces after applying the decoration.  

Naturalistic subjects were by far the most common, such as the scene on the tile made by Helen Macbeth.  A beautifully detailed heron stands amidst cattails and grasses in a wetlands setting; a second heron is seen flying off into the distance.  The detailing is so fine that the subtle ripples in the water, and a portion of the bird's reflection are accurately captured.  

Helen Macbeth later moved to Chicago, living first in Hyde Park, and then for many years in an apartment in the 2200 block of Prairie Avenue.  She died at the age of 96 on July 2, 1934, while staying at the Glessner family summer home, The Rocks, in Littleton, New Hampshire.

February 2018 - Trinket Box by Enrico Tramonti

John and Frances Glessner enjoyed a close friendship with a number of musicians in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which they supported from the time of its founding in 1891.  Among their closest friends were harpist Enrico Tramonti and his wife Juliette.  Tramonti was born in Palermo on the island of Sicily on October 3, 1874.  Studying music from an early age, he settled upon the harp by the age of 15.  In 1896 he made his public debut for Queen Margherita of Italy and two years later performed for Queen Victoria.  He accepted the position of harpist with the Chicago Orchestra (as it was then known) in February 1902.  Soon after, he and his wife became acquainted with the Glessners, and the friendship grew from there.  They were frequent guests to the Glessner house, including special holidays, and Juliette was invited to become a member of Frances Glessner's Monday Morning Reading Class.

Tramonti was also a talented metalsmith like Frances Glessner, and no doubt they frequently talked about their hobby.  Over the years, he presented her with at least three pieces that he handmade.  The trinket box shown above, which measures 6-1/4" in diameter, features tooled brass sheets atop green stained leather formed into lunettes containing stylized foliage and flowers, the latter set with semi-precious stones, possibly carnelians.  The center medallion features a beetle and the four sides are completely covered in sheet brass decorated with foliage and flowers corresponding to the top lunettes.  The interior is lined with red velvet.

Tramonti also fashioned two hanging telephone registers, for holding slips of papers with names and telephone numbers, which the Glessners hung above their telephone table in the library.  Now displayed on the library desk, each features tooled brass decoration of foliage and fruit at the top, one with a large semi-precious stone at center.

Enrico Tramonti left the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1927 and died in Geneva, Switzerland on August 10, 1928 at the age of 53.  

January 2018 - Isaac Scott Bookcase

The Glessners’ long relationship with designer Isaac Elwood Scott began with a commission for this bookcase which they prominently displayed along the west wall in the second floor hall.  While touring through the Inter-State Industrial Exposition in the fall of 1875, the Glessners were impressed with an exhibit of “artistic furnishings and house fittings,” almost all of which had been carved by Scott.  One of the pieces in the exhibit was a bookcase, designed by architect Frederick Copeland and carved by Scott, that was virtually identical to what Scott crafted for the Glessners.  It was at exactly the same time that the Glessners purchased their copy of Charles Eastlake’s Hints on Household Taste, a book that clearly influenced Scott’s design aesthetic. 

The bookcase is a tour-de-force of design elements, ranging from the variety of finials to the ebonized holly wood panels depicting birds and vines, and from the carved door panels emulating tiles to the surface mounted hinges.  The flying buttresses, which visually support the bookcase, clearly place it within the Modern Gothic movement that was gaining momentum at the time and in which Scott became most proficient.

Considered by many furniture scholars to be the most significant piece crafted by Scott, the bookcase has been loaned to museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée D’Orsay, and has been featured in numerous publications focusing on late-19th century furniture design.

For further pieces designed by Isaac Scott for the family, see the entries below for March 2016, April 2016, and November 2017.

December 2017 - Galle Vase "Tempus Stellae"

The museum collection contains nearly a dozen pieces by the famed French glassmaker, Émile Gallé (1846-1904), one of the major forces in the French Art Nouveau movement.  His pieces, which feature beautiful enamel work (as seen on this example) or cameo glass, received praise beginning with the Paris Exhibition of 1878.  At the height of his popularity, his company in Nancy employed over 400 artisans in his glass division alone.  The firm also manufactured ceramics, furniture and small objets d’art.

The hexagonal barrel-shaped vase, measuring 12-1/2 inches in height, dates to the late 1880s and was originally displayed on the mantel of the bedroom used by the Glessner’s daughter Fanny.  It is currently displayed on the dresser in the courtyard bedroom.

An overall design of snow laden bamboo branches, with two brown-toned birds is clearly influenced by Japanese art objects, which Gallé began collecting in 1872.  Gallé first saw nearly 2,000 pieces made by Japanese artisans at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 where he represented his father’s firm, Gallé-Renemer, purveyors of ceramics.  In 1871, still representing his father’s firm, Gallé traveled to London for the Exposition there.  During that time, he visited the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert) and saw their Japanese collection.

The process of creating a piece such as this began with the creation of the design which would be transferred to the body of the vase using a sepia-colored paint.  The piece was then fired at a low temperature to affix the design to the body, a process called “le petit feu,” or little firing.  Enamel was then applied following the sepia lines.  Two types of enamels were used - translucent enamels which could be fired at a medium temperature, and opaque enamels which required a much higher one.  A single piece might require several separate firings.  This piece features enameling in blue, gold, green, brown, and black.

If the piece was to be engraved as well, this process followed enameling.  Occasionally, a portion of the piece might be flashed (covered with a thin sheet of glass of a different color from the body) then engraved to let the underbody show through.  This can be seen at the base of the vase where the layer of “snow” is etched with the Gallé name. 

Gallé was a deeply religious man, and many of his pieces feature religious symbols.  This vase features the Chi-Rho (shown at the upper left of the vase in the image above), one of the oldest Christograms, consisting of the Greek letters chi (x) and rho (p), the first two letters of Christ in Greek.  Above the Christogram are found the Latin words “Tempus Stellae,” meaning “time of the star.”  The phrase is taken from the story of the arrival of the three wisemen in Bethlehem to pay homage to the Christ child.  The Latin version of Matthew 2: 7, “Tunc Herodes clam vocatis magis diligenter didicit ab eis tempus stellae quae apparuit eis” when translated into English reads,  “Then Herod, privately calling the wise men, learned diligently of them the time of the star which appeared to them.”

November 2017 - Sketches by Francesca Alexander

During the Glessners’ trip to Europe in 1890, they were anxious to meet the well known artist Francesca Alexander (1837-1917).  Her father was a successful Boston portrait painter, and when she was 16, he moved the family to Florence Italy, where she soon began collecting folk songs and stories from amongst the Tuscan peasants.  In 1882, she was introduced to John Ruskin, the leading English art critic of his era, who was enchanted with her work.  He purchased her illustrated manuscript of transcribed songs, entitled Roadside Songs of Tuscany.  He remained a close friend and colleague and wrote the preface for this book and two others including The Story of Ida, a copy of which was owned by the Glessners.  He lectured about her work and distributed her drawings among various English museums, bringing her worldwide attention and making her an attraction for visitors to Florence. 

On March 29, 1890, the Glessners visited Alexander in her apartment, which John Glessner described as “very small, decorated with all manner of things and many flowers.  On one wall I counted more than 75 objects hanging - paintings, cabinets, photographs, brackets, etc.”  She was reluctant to sell any of her drawings, all of which were unfinished, due to her failing eyesight, but after the Glessners sent Fanny’s companion, Violette Scharff, back to her with an armful of Alpine roses, she consented.  The portrait of a young woman shown on the left side of the frame is only partially done, being sketched with a pencil and the face detailed with pen and ink in a stippling technique.  The second sketch depicts a peasant woman whom the Glessners met during their visit.  Executed in pen and ink in a cross hatching technique, the sketch features the prominent signature of the artist.  The two sketches were placed in a double frame made by Isaac Scott specifically for the artwork that stood on John Glessner’s side of the partner’s desk in the library.     

October 2017 - Nutshell Laboratories Carrying Case

Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962) is widely regarded as the mother of forensic science.  In 1932, she endowed the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University, the first of its kind in the United States.  Two years later, she presented the department with a library of 1,000 volumes, named in honor of her long time friend and colleague, Dr. George Burgess Magrath, who served as department chair.

In the early 1940s, she set up the Nutshell Laboratories at her home in Littleton, New Hampshire, located on a sprawling estate known as The Rocks.  Over the next several years, she crafted twenty meticulously detailed miniature death scenes, on the scale of one inch to one foot, that were used by state police officials to hone their skills at investigating crime scenes.  The models depicted murder, suicide, natural, and accidental death.  Although no one model depicted a specific investigation, everything illustrated was based on actual cases.  The level of craftsmanship was extraordinary.  Tiny doorknobs turned, and the keys in the locks actually worked.  Lee knit tiny stockings for some of the corpses using straight pins.  Assisting Lee in the construction of the models was craftsman Ralph Mosher, who built the rooms and much of the furniture.  After his death, his son Alton continued with Lee until her own death a decade later.  Alton Mosher related the story that he made a rocking chair for one of the models, based on a rocking chair that Lee owned.  When brought to her for review, she set it on the table and pushed it to start rocking.  Noting that it did not rock the same number of times as the actual chair, she returned it to be made again.  Her attention to detail was truly amazing.

The models were premiered at the first Seminar in Homicide Investigation for State Police which Lee held at Harvard in 1945.  They were named "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" after an old police saying, "Convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell."  Students attending the seminar would be assigned two models and given 90 minutes to study each one.  Each model would be accompanied by information reported to the "Nutshell Laboratories" giving clues as to the identity of the victim, and their family and financial situation.  At the end of the seminar, the students would provide verbal reports, and the point illustrated in each model was disclosed.  The models were not designed as "whodunits" but rather were crafted as "an exercise in observing, interpreting, evaluating, and reporting."  

The exact function of the carrying case, which measures 12" x 20" x 25", is unknown, although Lee traveled widely across the United States in her pursuit of professionalizing crime scene investigation, so it is likely she used it to carry the tools of her trade.  She was eventually awarded the status of police captain by nine states and the city of Chicago for her work.

An exhibit entitled "Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" opened at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. on October 20, 2017 and continues through January 28, 2018.  It is the first time that the nineteen surviving Nutshell Studies have been on public display.  The solutions will not be revealed as the models continue to be used in the bi-annual police seminars, held since the late 1960s (after Harvard closed its department) at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland.

September 2017 - Japanese Singing Bowl

One of the first objects visitors notice upon entering Glessner house is the large bronze bowl set upon a table in the main hall.  Displaying a dark patinated finish, the bowl measures 14 inches in diameter and is an example of the Glessners’ interest in Japanese design.  Known as a singing bowl, the piece is a standing bell positioned with its bottom surface resting on a cushion. 

H. H. Richardson had a singing bowl of comparable size in his study which the Glessners would have seen during their visit to his Brookline, Massachusetts home in 1885. It is probable that this is where they first came up with the idea to acquire one of their own, as the bowl appears in the earliest photographs taken of their Prairie Avenue home in 1888.   John Glessner later referred to it as “a Japanese temple gong of sweet tone” from the celebrated collection of Captain Brinkley.  That reference was to Francis Brinkley (1841-1912), an Anglo-Irish scholar who resided in Japan for over 40 years during the Meiji period, and authored numerous books on Japanese culture, art and architecture.  He amassed an important collection of Japanese art and pottery, much of which was destroyed during the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 and during World War II.

Gongs of this type were found in all Japanese temples and were an important part of Buddhist worship, being rung to signal the beginning and ending of periods of silent meditation.  They were also used during chanting, and were an important element in traditional Japanese funeral rites and ancestor worship.  The bowls, which were also widely made and used in Tibet, Nepal, and China, could be rung in two ways.  One was to strike the rim of the bowl with the padded end of the mallet, producing a deep tone.  The other was to slowly run the wooden end of the mallet around the exterior perimeter, gradually producing a sweet, higher pitched, tone that “sung.” 

Wear on the mallet would indicate that the Glessners rang their singing bowl both ways - to call guests to dinner and for special occasions including ushering in the New Year, as occurred on December 31, 1893, when Chicago Orchestra conductor Theodore Thomas was given the honor.  On December 31, 1909, Frances Glessner herself struck the gong, having attended the symphony concert earlier in the day to hear the premier of Frederick Stock's Symphony No. 1, which he dedicated to the Glessners.

Singing bowls are widely available today and are commonly used in meditation exercises, although most of these are much smaller so that they can be held in the palm of the hand.

Click hear to watch a brief YouTube video of the singing bowl being rung.

August 2017 - Partner's Desk

One of the largest pieces of furniture in the house is the partner's desk, which serves as the centerpiece of the library.  Constructed of quarter-sawn oak, the desktop measures five by eight feet, providing 40 square feet of work space for John and Frances Glessnser.  Inspiration for the piece appears to have come from an even larger desk in the study of H. H. Richardson, which the Glessners greatly admired.  

The piece is one of several made by A. H. Davenport and Company in 1887 specifically for the house.  (See December 2015 "Steinway Grand Piano" and October 2016 "Morris Adjustable Chair" for additional pieces).  It was designed by Charles A. Coolidge (1858-1936), one of three architects who reorganized H. H. Richardson's firm following his death in 1886 as Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge.  Coolidge was a graduate of Harvard University and received additional training in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before entering Richardson's firm in 1882, quickly rising to become a senior member of the firm.  He achieved a national reputation for his work, beginning with the design of the Stanford University campus in California in the fall of 1886.  In 1892 he moved to Chicago to establish a branch office for the firm, which received numerous commissions in Chicago including the Art Institute and the Chicago Public Library (now the Chicago Cultural Center).  He and his wife Julia (sister of his partner George Shepley) became close friends of the Glessners.

Detailing on the desk includes acanthus leaf carvings at the four corners and carved panels set into the two ends.  Each side of the desk features eight drawers, an open shelf and a large cabinet, providing equal work and storage space for both John and Frances Glessner.  Two large "hidden" drawers are located just below the desktop at either end of the desk; featuring no handles they are opened by grabbing finger holes carved into the bottom edge of the drawer.  The piece features two outlets on the desktop providing an easy way to plug in table lamps.

Perhaps the most unusual feature of the desk is its existence at all.  Although large homes such as the one built for the Glessners usually featured a library, the room was typically the domain of the male head of the household and was used for conducting business and entertaining male friends.  The presence of the partner's desk indicates clearly that the room was designed to be used equally by both John and Frances Glessner, yet another example of their progressive thinking.  They were so fond of the desk that they had additional partner's desks made by Davenport (albeit slightly smaller in scale) which were given to their children and are still used by their descendants.

The desk remained in the house when most other furnishings were removed following the death of John Glessner in 1936.  It was used by both Armour Institute and the Lithographic Technical Foundation during their occupancy of the building, and it hosted meetings in the mid-1960s when architects and preservationists gathered to formulate a plan to preserve the house.

July 2017 - Gien Ewer and Basin

In October 1875, the Glessners attended the Interstate Industrial Exposition in downtown Chicago.  Among the pieces they acquired was this handsome ewer and basin manufactured by the French firm of Gien, considered one of the finest faience manufacturers in the 19th century.  The company dates back to 1821 when Thomas Hulm/Hull purchased an old convent at Minimes and opened his new factory to produce faience using English methods.  Early pieces tended to be more utilitarian in nature, but later the firm began producing decorative pieces and dinner services, often copying older objects that combined old and new decoration inspired by other manufacturers in Europe as well as pieces from the Middle East.  The last half of the 19th century is generally regarded as the pinnacle of faience production by Gien.  The firm won numerous awards at international expositions throughout that time period.

The Glessners' piece is a close copy of Rouenware which was made in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Rouen, then a major center of French pottery.  A similar ewer, dating to about 1700, appeared in a recent exhibition of pieces from the MaryLou Boone Collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  The two are virtually identical in shape, including the applied handle, although the blue and white decoration differs.

A mark on the underside of the basin, consisting of three crenelated towers with a ribbon beneath bearing the name GIEN, dates the Glessners' piece to the first half of the 1870s.  The three towers design is also used in a medallion beneath the lip of the ewer, and serves as the central motif in the basin.  Additional decoration includes a royonnant design inside the basin and a variety of richly detailed floral decorations and foliate scrolls across the body of the ewer and basin.  The heavy lip of the ewer is decorated with a twisted rope design.  One of the most unusual features is a pair of grotesque masks forming handles for the basin, which sits atop four pyramidal peg feet.

The piece is currently displayed in the second floor hall atop a set of nesting tables.  The firm of Gien is still in existence and continues to produce high quality earthenware.  The Gien Museum was opened in 1986 featuring numerous pieces from throughout the firm's history, including special pieces created for the various World's Fairs.

June 2017 - Pretyman Wallcovering

The most elaborately decorated room in the Glessners' home was the parlor, where they entertained friends including Prairie Avenue neighbors, architects, authors, artists, university presidents, and musicians.  The highlight of the room was an intricately painted burlap wallcovering designed and executed by the English decorator William Pretyman in 1892.  Although the wallcovering had been painted over by the time the building was acquired by the museum in 1966, it was meticulously recreated and installed as part of the parlor restoration project, completed in the fall of 2011.

Pretyman was born in Aylesbury, England in 1849 and immigrated to the United States in the early 1880s, settling in Chicago in 1885.  A close friend of architect John Wellborn Root, he provided decoration for a number of building by Burnham & Root including the dry goods store on the first floor of the Reliance Building, and Willard Hall in the Women's Temple, as well as the banking room for the Society for Savings in Cleveland, Ohio (his only known surviving work outside of Glessner House).  Other Chicago projects included a redecorating of the sanctuary of Second Presbyterian Church on South Michigan Avenue, The Church of the Atonement in Edgewater, and the MacVeagh House on Lake Shore Drive.  He was appointed the Director of Color for the World's Columbian Exposition but resigned soon after the death of his friend Root, and the decision to create the "White City."  He returned to England in the mid-1890s and died there in 1920.

In 2011, the Denver based firm Grammar of Ornament analyzed historic photographs of the parlor and one surviving unpainted section (from behind a wall sconce) to recreate Pretyman's elaborate design.  The canvas panels (substituted for the original burlap, but with a similar coarse surface to enhance the reflective nature of the metallic paints) were primed and painted with a grey base coat.  A silver metallic ground was applied over which a gold metallic paint was randomly scrumbled to create the metallic variations found in the original.  Two variations of hand-cut stencils were designed to create the negative or reddish copper background before the application of the final detail stencils that articulate the actual design elements.  A deep violet acrylic base was stenciled first followed by the application of tinted copper paint.  Two additional stencils were used to create the small line details that created the actual design of birds, and foliage.  Silver highlights completed the design, and the panels were ready for installation, which took place over three days.

The parlor was revealed to the public at a special grand opening on October 14, 2011.  Funding for the project came from a generous bequest from docent Bunny Selig, gifts in memory of docent Aileen Mandel, a grant from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, and donors to the 125th Anniversary Fund.  Members of the Selig and Mandel families cut the ribbons in purple and teal, officially opening this jewel box space within Glessner house, that has since become a favorite of visitors.

May 2017 - Kutani Bowl

Measuring more than 19 inches in diameter, this boldly colored porcellaneous stoneware bowl is an example of ao (green) Kutani and is dateable to the 1870s period when the Glessners first began collecting Japanese objects.  Original Kutani ware was only made for a brief period in the Kaga province during the mid-17th century, but the process was revived in the 19th century.  Ao Kutani refers to pieces that are decorated all over in green, yellow, and purple, usually with geometric background patterns.  A "fuku" (good luck) mark on the reverse of the piece indicates it may have been produced at the Yoshidaya kiln, built on the site of the Old Kutani kiln.  

The Glessners' piece features a bold design of bamboo stalks and leaves with cherry blossoms, all set against a background of stylized chrysanthemums.  The sides are turquoise with stylized scalloped clouds.  The bowl appears in photographs of the Glessners' home on Washington Street taken about 1880, so it is clearly among the earlier pieces of Japanese manufacture that the Glessners purchased.  In their Prairie Avenue home, the piece was always displayed atop the Isaac Scott-designed bookcase in the upper hall.

The bowl was severely damaged in 1996 and the pieces were put into storage for nearly twenty years.  In 2013, a full restoration of the bowl was undertaken by The Conservation Center, utilizing a generous gift to the museum from the Chicago Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, The First Chapter (of which Frances Glessner was a charter member in 1891).

Since being returned to the museum, the bowl has been displayed on the library table in the upper hall, also designed by Isaac Scott.  It is a reminder of both the Glessners' interest in Japonisme, and Frances Glessner's connection to the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

April 2017 - Iznik Tiles

During construction of the house in 1886-1887, John and Frances Glessner spent considerable time shopping for items for their new home.  Among the most interest items they acquired was a set of Iznik tiles for the dining room fireplace, the name Iznik derived from the city in Turkey where the tiles were made.

In 1886, Frances Glessner noted in her journal during a trip to New York, "We went Thursday morning to hunt up tiles.  We found some beauties at Lockwood de Forest's."  Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) was an important figure in the American Aesthetic Movement, largely remembered today for introducing East Indian crafts to America.  In the late 1870s he turned his attention to decoration and architecture, becoming a partner in the design firm of Associated Artists, along with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler.  His travels took him to the Middle East, North Africa, and most importantly, British India, where he developed a passion for local craftsmanship.  After Associated Artists closed in 1882, de Forest opened his own successful company, supplying decorative items and architectural elements to clients such as Andrew Carnegie, Charles Tyson Yerkes, Mark Twain, and Potter Palmer.  

De Forest apparently acquired a significant number of tiles like the ones the Glessners purchased.  They appear in at least two other houses with which he was associated, including his own home in Santa Barbara, where they are used on a fountain in an outdoor courtyard.  Correspondence between de Forest and the Glessners indicate that he had just enough tiles left to complete their dining room fireplace.

The tiles, which are roughly eight inches square, were made in the Iznik region of Turkey in the middle part of the 16th century.  They were installed in various locations throughout the the Middle East including the tomb of Muhi al-din Abn'Arabi in Damascus, Syria.  Polychromatic schemes were developed during the middle period of Iznik pottery making using seven colors in various combinations - blue, purple, red, green, turquoise, grey, and black.  The body of the tiles is fritware, a composite paste material made from quartz sand mixed with small amounts of finely ground glass (frit) and clay.  When fired, the frit melts and binds the other components together.  The tile was then coated with a thin layer of white slip - a liquid clay mixture similar to the fritware paste, but more finely ground and purer in composition.  The tile was lightly fired to dry it out, and then painted with pigments mixed with frit.  The wares were then glazed with a lead-alkaline-tin glaze and fired to a transparent sheen.

The vivid colors and striking design continue to inspire and impress.

March 2017 - Creamware Punch Jug

A piece often noticed by museum visitors in the Glessner dining room is a large creamware punch jug, positioned in the center of the upper shelf on the sideboard.  Historic photographs show that the piece was displayed in this location for the entire time the Glessners occupied the house.

The punch jug is a beautiful example of creamware, earthenware made from white Cornish clay with a translucent glaze, developed in England in the last half of the 18th century.  Josiah Wedgwood found great commercial success with this type of utilitarian ware, but encountered competition from brothers John and Joshua Green who established Leeds Pottery in Leeds in 1770.  It was this latter firm that made the Glessner piece.  The clarity and simplicity of creamware meant that its appeal rested on the elegant shapes.  The punch jug features a beautifully tapered body 12 inches in height.  A cast handle with a projecting thumb piece was attached opposite the lipped spout.  Underneath the spout, written in script, is the inscription “6 Quart 1811.” 

John Glessner was especially proud of this piece and mentioned it specifically in his The Story of a House: “An old Leeds pattern pitcher, to hold six quarts, and bearing the date 1811, given by the Pottery to Briggs, the Boston dealer, and by him to me, has stood on the sideboard for a good many years, and has often attracted attention for its size and glaze and graceful shape.”

The Glessners owned another piece of creamware which was also displayed on the upper shelf of the sideboard.  That piece, known as a punch pot, is probably a bit older, and is believed to date to around 1790.  Also produced by the Leeds Pottery, the graceful cylindrical shape with only an applied ball finial on the lid for decoration speaks to the Glessners' sophisticated collecting tastes.

February 2017 - Siamese Rice Bowl

One of the most admired pieces in the museum, and a favorite of the Glessners, is a stunning rice bowl displayed on the side table in the dining room.  The object came to Chicago in 1893 as part of the Siamese exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition.  In November 1893, just a few weeks after the close of the Fair, Frances Glessner recorded in her journal that "we bought a beautiful punch bowl from Siam - silver and gold."  The ensemble - consisting of a large presentation bowl, three-footed stand with pointed scallop edging, and oversized spoon - is composed of hammered silver with applied gold leaf.  The surface is coverd with niello - a black mixture of copper, silver, and lead sulphides - which is used as an inlay to fill the intricate designs of flowers, foliage, squirrels, rabbits, and birds cut into the surface of the pieces.  Siamese artisans were known for their excellent niello work, dating back several centuries, although the process was also used by craftsmen in various parts of Europe since the Iron Age.

A pair of especially fine gilt silver niello teapots, with decoration similar to the punch bowl, were presented to President Franklin Pierce in 1856 by King Rama IV.  they are now in the possession of the Smithsonian Institution.  John Glessner noted in The Story of a House that "Sir Purdon Clarke of the British said it was a museum piece so fine that our Art Institute should keep an eye on it and never let it get away."  Ironically, the Glessner descendants did donate the ensemble to the Art Institute in 1971, but ownership was transferred to Glessner House Museum the following year.

In March 2014, the Deputy Secretary to His Majesty the King of Thailand visited the museum with six others for a private tour led by Executive Director and Curator William Tyre.  The Secretary provided interesting information about the piece including the fact that it was not a punch bowl (as the Glessners always referred to it), but rather a large rice bowl.  Even more interesting was the fact that decoration of the piece, including a tiger on cross-hatched hills set into the central reserve on the bottom of the bowl, indicated that the piece was originally made for use in the royal household.  King Rama V would have later selected the piece for inclusion in his country's exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition.

For more information on the rice bowl and the Siamese pavilion at the Exposition, click here to read an article published on the museum blog in October 2013.

January 2017 - Benson Electric Lamp

This electric lamp, displayed on a side table in the parlor, is among the most important pieces in the museum collection representing the English Arts & Crafts movement.  Acquired by the Glessners about 1900, the lamp is a classic example of the work of William Arthur Smith Benson, whose lamps embraced the new technology of electricity while preserving the simple honest lines of Arts & Crafts pieces.

The lamp, which measures 19 inches in height, features a copper flaring fan-form shade with eight blades, which rests upon a turned brass standard with a bell-shaped base sitting upon a square foot, the whole raised on a series of four bun feet.  Significantly, Benson formulated a thin lacquer, that was nearly invisible when applied to the copper and brass, but prevented it from tarnishing in the cold damp British climate.  The copper blades, which reflect the light, but conceal the light bulb, are also significant to Benson's work.  The German architect and critic Hermann Muthesius wrote in The English House in 1904 that Benson was the first to illuminate tables with light reflected from a shiny metal surface, while keeping the actual source of illumination hidden.  A similar lamp is found in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

W. A. S. Benson was born into a well-to-do family in London in 1854 and received his education at Eton and Oxford, later training in the office of the architect Basil Champneys.  After forming a friendship with Edward Burne-Jones, he was introduced to William Morris who encouraged Benson to open his own metal workshop, which he did in 1880, marketing his items through Morris & Co.  Widely regarded as the foremost metalworker of his time, Benson differed from Morris in that he embraced machine techniques as a means of producing domestic articles, thus making them affordable to a broader audience.  He was a leading figure of the Arts and Crafts movement and helped found the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1888, writing the essay on metalwork for its first catalog.  Following the death of William Morris in 1896, Benson became the managing director of Morris & Co., for whom he had also designed furniture and wallpaper.

During World War I, Benson's factory was converted to produce materials for the war effort.  He closed the factory upon his retirement in 1920, and died four years later.

December 2016 - The Adoration of the Magi

This cast plaster plaque depicting the three wisemen presenting gifts to the Christ child is one of a series of four fictile ivories (copies made from original ivory or bone carvings) on display over the mantel in the courtyard guestroom.  The original piece was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1866 and is currently on display in their Medieval and Renaissance Gallery.  Carved by an unknown artist from the bone of a Rorqual, or Finner, whale, it was created between 1120 and 1150 A.D. in northern Spain and measures 14.4" tall by 6.3" wide.

The level of craftsmanship on the original is very high, and the depiction of the kings as pilgrims was very popular along the road to Santiago de Compostela.  Additional symbolism includes beasts fighting at the feet of the Virgin Mary, and an owl at the top, which some scholars have interpreted as reflecting the circumstances of "reconquista" in which the object was produced. The largest figure is the Virgin Mary, seated beneath a Romanesque arch from which is hung an elaborately detailed drapery.  She wears a pleated head dress and a jeweled diadem.  The Christ child is seated on her left knee, with the three kings crowed and carrying staves, offering their traditional gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The maker of the cast owned by the Glessners is unknown, but information from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, which owns a large collection of fictile ivories made in England, provides a possible source.  Two Englishmen, J. O. Westwood and A. Nesbitt, made numerous casts of original artworks.  The process involved mixing wax and gutta-percha (a natural latex) which was then flattened into a piece larger than the artwork to be copied.  The artwork was wetted with cold water or soap, after which the mix of wax and gutta-percha was placed upon it and pressed carefully so as to reach into all the deepest cuts.  After the mixture hardened and cooled, it was lifted carefully from the artwork, after which it was ready to receive plaster of Paris.  The molds were used to make numerous plaster copies which were widely purchased in the mid- to late-19th century by museums and for domestic use.

During the 1870s and 1880s, the Chicago Tribune featured several articles that discussed plaster casts as art.  An 1878 article noted that the managers of the Interstate Industrial Exposition (which the Glessners attended each year) were assembling a large collection of plaster casts.  A prominent local dealer was Anthony Equi, so it is highly probable the Glessners either acquired their casts directly at the Exposition or through Equi's gallery.

The four casts purchased by the Glessners were set into custom-made shadowboxes designed and executed by Isaac Elwood Scott.  Acquired prior to their move to Prairie Avenue in 1887, the casts were always displayed in the courtyard guestroom once they moved into their new home, where they continue to impress visitors with their fine detailing.

November 2016 - Shakespeare Statue by J. Q. A. Ward

This beautiful bronze statue in the Glessner library, measuring 28 inches in height, was created by leading American sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, a first cousin of Frances Glessner.  Ward was born in Urbana, Ohio in 1830 and, after training with sculptor Henry Kirke Brown, relocated to Washington D.C. in 1857, where he created portrait busts of men in public life.  His sculpture, The Indian Hunter, was exhibited publicly in Central Park in New York City in 1859, and became his first work to receive wide public acclaim.  In 1861, he set up a studio in New York City, and was elected to the National Academy of Design the next year; he served as president in 1874.  He received numerous commissions for large-scale public monuments, including the statue of George Washington in Federal Hall, New York City, the Yorktown Victory Monument, and Integrity Protecting the Works of Man, which forms the pediment of the New York Stock Exchange Building.  He collaborated on thirteen public sculptures with architect Richard Morris Hunt, and took into his atelier rising American sculptors Daniel Chester French, Francois Rey, and Charles Albert Lopez.  He died in 1910.

The Glessners' Shakespeare is actually a maquette of the life-size bronze statue which stands in New York City's Central Park.  Ward created the original in 1870 for the celebration of the tercentenary of the birth of Shakespeare; it was dedicated on May 23, 1872.  The piece is typical of Ward's early standing figures, combining a classical pose with his usual objective study of the subject, evidenced in his concern for details of dress, pose, and likeness.  At least six copies are known to exist, including one in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Frances Glessner's journal, she records a visit to Ward's New York studio in March 1893: "He showed us in the studio a small model of his Shakespeare which he is working over for us."  The Glessners paid $400 for the piece which Ward had cast by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company in New York.  It was delivered to their Prairie Avenue home in 1894.

October 2016 - Morris Adjustable Chair by A. H. Davenport & Company

On December 1, 1887, Frances Glessner made the following entry in her journal, "We found a car load of our furniture had come from Davenport, and had it brought here, unloaded and most of it unpacked.  It is very beautiful."  The Glessners paid $10,140 to A. H. Davenport and Company for furniture and interior decoration, an expenditure that represented nearly 10% of the total cost of their new house on Prairie Avenue.  

The company was founded by Alfred H. Davenport (1845-1905) who began his career as a bookkeeper with the Boston Furniture Company, acquiring the business following the death of its owner.  He quickly expanded the business and opened a second showroom in New York.  The firm became well-known for its high-end and custom-made furniture, as well as its broad range of wallpaper, fabric, hardware, and other decorative items crafted by various makers.  One of their most important projects was new furniture for the State Dining Room, Executive Office, and Green Room, provided for the remodeling of the White House under Theodore Roosevelt.  The firm established a close relationship with H. H. Richardson, and created furniture for many of his library projects, the Court of Appeals in the New York State Capitol, and the Warder House in Washington, D.C.  

This chair, used by the Glessners in their library, is based on one of the most admired and copied furniture designs of Morris & Company.  Big, roomy, and incredibly comfortable, the chair features wide arms to accommodate books, a loose cushioned seat, and a reclining back that is adjustable by a hinge at the base and held secure with a brass rod across the back that fits into a one of a series of grooves.  The original Morris chair, as it is simply referred to today, was designed by Philip Webb in 1866 for Morris & Co., and was based on a prototype belonging to an old Sussex carpenter.  Eventually many variations of the design were being produced in different styles, materials, and price points.  By the early 20th century, nearly every manufacturer at the New York Furniture Exchange displayed some form of the chair.

Several features of this chair including the shape of the spindles and arms, the shape and splay of the front legs, and the cut, color, and finish of the quarter-sawn oak are considered iconic trademarks of the work of A. H. Davenport and Company.  The chair was originally covered in a cut velvet fabric known as Utrecht made by Morris & Co.  The same fabric was used on several pieces of furniture in the Glessners' library including a sofa and an arm chair.

September 2016 - "Asiatic Plants" Transferware Soup Tureen

This early Victorian transferware soup tureen, an ever-present yet often overlooked Glessner family heirloom, historically occupied the lower shelf on the Dining Room sideboard. The blue “Asiatic Plants” pattern was likely manufactured by English potter William Ridgway (active 1830-34), or his successor firm Ridgway, Morely, Wear & Co. (1836-42). Part of the booming ceramics trade in the county of Staffordshire, the piece was produced at either the Bell Works in Shelton or Church Works in Handley, then exported to the American market.

John Jacob Glessner, writing in March 1927 to the members of the Monday Morning Reading Class regarding the decorative items in the house, mentions "There is...an old English soup tureen and ladle that was my mother's ninety years ago," setting the date of acquisition to about 1837.  Mr. Glessner’s parents, Jacob Glessner and Mary Laughlin, were married in April 1837 and the tureen is presumed by museum staff to have been a wedding gift. 

The tureen with matching tray and accompanying ladle (in another unidentified pattern) evidence the fad for Asian motifs which persisted throughout the nineteenth century. The exotic plants on the tureen and quaint Chinese village scene on the bowl of the ladle were directly influenced by trade being opened to the east. Beginning in the eighteenth century, European potteries attempted to emulate the fine, hand-painted blue and white porcelain being exported from China. With the growth of the English middle class, the demand for more affordable tableware resulted in the advent of under-glaze transfer-printing: a process in which intricate designs are engraved into copper plates, inked, and transferred onto to thin tissue paper. From the paper, the design is then transferred to bisque porcelain before it is glazed. The majority of ceramic goods on the market during the time the Glessners lived were produced in Staffordshire, England with American potteries coming into their own right toward the second half of the nineteenth century.

The tureen and ladle have remained in the Glessner family since 1837, being passed from Mary Laughlin Glessner to John Jacob Glessner to his daughter Frances Glessner Lee, then to her granddaughter Martha Lee Batchelder. In 1995, Glessner House Museum received the treasured heirloom, which is currently on exhibit in the Butler’s Pantry. 

August 2016 - Handpainted bowl by Frances Glessner

Frances Glessner is well known for her work making silver objects and jewelry, but it was only in recent years that it was discovered she was also a fine amateur china painter.  During the last three decades of the 19th century, china painting became an extremely popular hobby for women, launched in large part by the publication in 1877 of China Painting by artist Mary Louise McLaughlin, the first manual on the subject in the United States written by a woman for women.  A decade later, artist Luetta Elmina Braumuller began publishing a magazine on the subject entitled The China Decorator, A Monthly Journal Devoted Exclusively to This Art, which became the recognized authority on the subject.

The shallow oval dish in the museum collection is the only example of Frances Glessner's china painting abilities.  Measuring 10.25" in diameter, the bowl is painted in shades of orange-red with a gold edge.  An avid bird watcher, Glessner decorated the bowl with a branch of pink wild roses holding a small bird's nest containing two eggs.  A smaller branch above appears to be cherry or apple blossoms.  It may well have been painted from life during the time spent each summer by the family at their New Hampshire estate, The Rocks.

Frances Glessner presented the bowl to Charlotte Johnson, the wife of the Glessners' long-time chauffeur, Swan Johnson.  (Charlotte worked as a cook for a family in Lake Forest).  When Johnson closed up her Andersonville apartment in the early 1960s, she gave the bowl to her good friend May Stoesser, who preserved the bowl and its story until presenting it to Glessner House Museum in 2010.  Today the bowl is displayed on the dresser in the corner guestroom.

July 2016 - Silver Oil Lamp

Standing nearly 36 inches tall, this stately oil lamp has occupied a prominent place on the grand piano in the parlor since it was purchased by the Glessners during their one and only trip to Europe in 1890.  The lamp is executed in the Neo-Rococo style popular during the reign of Victor Emmanuel II, who ruled as the first king of a unified Italy from 1861 to 1878.

The lamp features four armatures decorated with scroll chasing containing wicks, all protruding from a bulbous oil basin.  Above this assemblage is a pear-shaped knob supporting a silver ring from which lamp tools - including a snuffer, wick trimmer, and two wicker feeders - are suspended on long silver chains.  The top of the lamp is crowned with a coronet-shaped handled surmounted by a tiny finial.

Although John Glessner referred to the piece as "an antique Roman lamp brought from the Eternal City" (Rome), the few silver Roman oil lamps that survive are of a completely different configuration and much more modest in design.  As such, it is safe to conclude that a silversmith in Rome in the 1870s made "invented" lamps such as this for the American tourist trade.  Isabella Stewart Gardner, for example, purchased a very similar lamp in October 1886 during a visit to Florence Italy; the piece is now displayed in her Boston museum.

Regardless of the "historic basis" of the lamp, it would have been right up to the minute in style, and would have fit well with all of the other revival pieces the Glessners purchased for their home.

June 2016 - Venetian Ewer

This elegant glass ewer, which sits atop the north bookcase in the library, was created in one of the many glass factories on the island of Murano adjacent to Venice.  Since the tenth century, Venice had boasted a tradition of decorative glass production, due to its surplus of skilled craftsmen who emigrated there from Aquiteia and Byzantium.  The Grand Council of Venice ensured its exclusive domination of the glass industry by banning the emigration of glass artisans and the divulging of trade secrets; both crimes were punishable by death.

This light green glass ewer’s gracefully elongated body, applied handle and large spout are decorated with polychrome enamel painted in Renaissance-derived scroll-shaped floral designs on a gold vermicelli background, above and below which are horizontal rows of gilt scales highlighted with tiny painted enamel dots.  The clarity of the glass color and the intricate decoration exemplify the finest of 19th century Venetian glassware.

The ewer was a gift to John Glessner from his daughter Fanny in 1884, on the occasion of her parent’s fourteenth wedding anniversary, as recorded in Frances Glessner’s journal, “Fanny gave her Papa a (blue) Venetian glass ewer.”  Her gift was placed atop a bookcase in the library of their Washington Street home, and later moved to the mantle of the library in their Prairie Avenue home.  Certainly, John Glessner thought of this object when describing the family’s “collection of Galle and Venetian and other rare glass” in his book about his beloved home, The Story of a House, which he wrote in 1923 for his children.

Many well-known 19th century glass artists including Daum, Tiffany, and Galle, were inspired by the traditions and technologies of Venetian glass making.  Numerous examples of their work may be seen at Glessner House Museum.  Salviati & Sons still produces traditional Venetian art glass objects on the island of Murano.  Using historic photographs taken by George Glessner, they reproduced the glass shades now seen on the wall sconces in the parlor and main hall.

May 2016 - Silver by Frances Glessner

Frances Glessner (1848-1932) began taking lessons in metal work from Madeline Yale Wynne in November 1904.  Wynne was a highly talented metal worker and a charter member of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society, founded at Hull-House in 1897.  Soon after, Glessner began lessons with two other talented metal workers as well.  Annibale Fogliata was a native of Milan, Italy, and came to Chicago in 1904 to teach metalworking at Hull-House.  Her third teacher was Frederik W. Sandberg, a native of Sweden who lectured extensively at the Art Institute and had exhibited his wares at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.

Among the first pieces made by Frances Glessner was a small salt cellar which she presented to her husband for Christmas just one month after her lessons began.  It is one of three pieces on permanent display at the museum in the silver closet of the dining room.  The largest piece is a calling card tray that for many years sat on the table in the main hall, to receive cards from lady visitors.  The third piece, shown above, is a charming bowl with an elegant scalloped edge made for her youngest granddaughter, Martha Lee, born in 1906.  It is engraved "MARTHA LEE FROM F.M.G."

Frances Glessner set up her silversmithing studio in the basement of her Prairie Avenue home, in the room directly below the dining room.  Her silver mark consisted of her initial "G" encircling a honeybee, the symbol of another of her favorite hobbies - beekeeping.  Trademark features of her work include simple clean lines and visible hammer marks across the surface.  She actively pursued her interest in metal work for about a decade, making countless pieces as gifts and expanding to make jewelry as well, usually long chains set with semiprecious stones.  Her journal is full of letters from thankful recipients.

April 2016 - Pompone de Bellievre Engraving

This portrait, created c. 1670, was engraved by Robert Nanteuil (c. 1623-1678), after a painting by Charles LeBrun (1619-1690). The subject, Pompone de Bellievre, shown in the print with long hair and a moustache and wearing exquisite furs, was a French magistrate and statesman. He was an ambassador to England, and from 1653 until his death in 1657, served as the first President of the Parliament of Paris.

This engraving was purchased by the Glessners from the respected print dealer, Frederick Keppel. Keppel wrote and lectured widely on the subject of fine prints, and in his essay, “The Golden Age of Engraving,” he wrote that the portrait of Pompone de Bellievre by Nanteuil was among the finest engraved portraits in existence, making a good copy of the work something that was hard to acquire. Receipts from Frederick Keppel show that the Glessners purchased their first copy of Pompone de Bellievre for $48.00 on December 11, 1879. Two weeks prior to the purchase, Frances Glessner wrote about the process of selecting the engraving in her journal. The Glessners seemed to have closely followed the guidance of Keppel in selecting prints for their home, and a receipt from the dealer, dated November 29, 1881, shows that they returned their first copy of Pompone de Bellievre, and purchased one of higher quality for $150.00. Once again, the selection of the engraving is described by Frances Glessner in a journal entry in which she noted that Isaac Scott (who created many frames for the Glessners’ collection) participated in the selection process, and that the print was chosen for its superior quality.

The Glessners collected over one hundred prints, the majority of which were purchased from Frederick Keppel between 1877 and 1891. John and Frances Glessner both wrote of the joy the process of collecting prints brought them. In a speech that John Glessner wrote in 1927, he described their collection as a whole, going through their home room by room to point out individual artworks of all types. In his description of pieces in the parlor, he went into specific detail about their portrait of Pompone de Bellievre, noting that the engraving was of the best quality, and among the choicest prints they owned.

Just as it did during the Glessners’ time, the engraving is currently displayed in the parlor in its original Isaac Scott frame of mahogany and bird’s eye maple.

March 2016 - Isaac Scott Pilgrim Vase

This vase, also known as a pilgrim vase, is among four created in 1879 for the Glessners by Isaac E. Scott at the Chelsea Keramic Art Works outside of Boston.  Although Scott was proficient working in clay, even producing stunning examples of architectural terra cotta, the pilgrim vases are the only examples of his pottery work in the museum collection.  The tan-colored piece measures 14.5" in height and is unglazed.  It was made in a press mold, with the high-relief figures on the front applied later.  The scene is dominated by the figure of a perched bird at left crying out to a mythological Medieval grotesque, whose body gently curves to accommodate the shape of the piece.  The reverse features incised and relief decoration of long-stemmed flowers and leaves with a butterfly above and the inscription "To John J Glessner Esq. of Chicago from Scott . . . Oct 25 1879" at the bottom.

The Chelsea Keramic Art Works was founded in 1866 by A. W. Robertson, who was later joined by his brother Hugh and father James, an experienced Scotch potter.  The firm was known for producing wares of very high quality both in materials and design, and remained in operation until 1889.

Isaac Scott played a central role in the life of the Glessners from the time of their initial meeting at the Interstate Industrial Exposition in 1875, until his death in 1920.  The bulk of the pieces made by Scott for the family were created between 1875 and 1883, the year he moved to New York.  By 1889 he had relocated to Boston where he taught at the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain, an institution devoted to craft arts.

The vase was displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago as part of their exhibit "Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago," November 7, 2009 - January 31, 2010.

February 2016 - Lincoln Life Mask

The bronze life mask and hands of Abraham Lincoln, displayed on the partner's desk in the library, were among John Glessner's most cherished objects.  They are exact copies of the original plaster casts made by Chicago sculptor Leonard W. Volk.  The face was made in April 1860, and the hands the following month, immediately after Lincoln's nomination by the Republicans for the presidency.  (The right hand was still swollen from all the handshaking of Lincoln's latest campaign - a difference that is visible in the casts).  

Volk eventually gave the plaster casts to his son Douglas, who later passed them on to a fellow art student.  In February 1886, editor/poet Richard Watson Gilder, sculptor August St. Gaudens, and art collector Thomas B. Clarke sent out a letter to a select group of individuals soliciting subscriptions in order to purchase the original casts and present them to the National Museum in Washington (now the Smithsonian Institution).  Subscribers who gave $50 received a replica set in plaster; those who gave $85 received a set in bronze.  Frances Glessner noted in her journal that their bronze set, inscribed with John Glessner's name on the underside of the life mask, was received in late May 1886.  

In 1888, the original plaster mask and hands, together with the first bronze casts, were presented to the National Museum.  A total of 33 subscribers provided the funds, including John Glessner and his wife's first cousin, the American sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward.  Ward was a good friend of St. Gaudens, so it appears likely he suggested that John Glessner be including on the mailing list, when the original subscription letter was mailed in February 1886.  

January 2016 - De Morgan Vase

This robust, colorful vase, displayed on the music cabinet in the parlor, is the work of one of the late 19th century's most innovative ceramic artists, William Frend De Morgan (1839-1917).  The large vase, nearly 16 inches tall, features circular lug handles set onto a bulbous baluster-shaped body.  Masted Medieval vessels under full sail navigate seas filled with jumping fish in green, blue, turquoise, and yellow.  The sail at far right depicts an ouroboros - a snake eating its own tail - a mythological creature symbolizing the cycle of life.  (A pair of ouroboros are also carved into the granite on the front facade of the house).

De Morgan was born in London and enrolled in art at the Academy Schools in 1859.  Three years later, he met William Morris and abandoned painting to join Morris's team of designers.  He executed numerous glass and tile designs, and painted panels for furniture designed by his associate Philip Webb.  While working on stained glass, De Morgan discovered that silver pigments caused an iridescent surface on the glass.  His subsequent experiments on tiles to reproduce this effect resulted in the first modern luster tiles being produced in 1870.  (The Glessners purchased two sets of his tiles for the fireplaces in their master bedroom and the courtyard guestroom).  In 1872, he opened a pottery works and over the next decade produced some of his finest work, including many pieces based on traditional 13th century Islamic pottery from Turkey, Persia, and Syria.  His "Persian colours," as these ceramics came be to known, became the hallmark of his work and the fashion throughout Victorian-era England.

This vase was most likely produced in De Morgan's ceramic works in Sand's End, London, and would have been purchased by the Glessners about 1890.  Large vases such as this were the most expensive pieces produced, and were painted by De Morgan himself, or under his close supervision.  

December 2015 - Steinway Grand Piano

The magnificent grand piano in the parlor, custom made for Frances Glessner, is the product of renowned piano maker Steinway & Sons and furniture designer Francis H. Bacon.  The piano was ordered in May 1887 when the Glessners visited the Steinway headquarters in New York.  Nahum Stetson, Chief of Sales for Steinway, personally supervised the production of the piano, and the mechanics were "the best they could produce" according to John Glessner.  The piano is a Model C Parlor Concert Grand Piano, the second largest of Steinway's seven grand piano models.  Steinway shipped the piano to the A. H. Davenport company in Boston for the creation of the custom made case.  Chief designer Francis H. Bacon designed elaborate floral and scrolled carved detailing in mahogany complete with satyr masks and a keyboard cover inlaid with floral and diamond patterns in walnut, birch, and mother-of-pearl.  The completed instrument weighed 900 pounds and cost $1,500.  It was delivered to the Glessners' Prairie Avenue home in late December 1887.  Ignacy Paderewski, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, and Percy Grainger were among the many world-famous musicians to entertain the Glessners and their friends on the instrument.

Frances Glessner Lee donated her mother's piano to Harvard University in the late 1930s in honor of her parents' close friendship with Charles Eliot, president of the university from 1869 to 1909.  In 1979, the piano was returned to the house through the generosity of Gardner Cowles, founder and publisher of Look magazine, and a trustee of Harvard.  In March 1980, it was officially dedicated with a concert of 19th century music performed by Etsko Tazaki, a protege of Sir Georg Solti, who was present for the dedication.  It is still used for occasional recitals and other programs.

Click here for a video of the 18th variation from Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini being performed on the Steinway grand by curator William Tyre on April 6, 2020.