Queenswalk: Quezal Art Glass & Decorating Co.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the decorative arts are defined as “any of those arts that are concerned with the design and decoration of objects that are chiefly prized for their utility, rather than for their purely aesthetic qualities. Ceramics, glassware, basketry, jewelry, metalware, furniture, textiles, clothing, and other such goods are the objects most commonly associated with the decorative arts. While Western man certainly prized the objects of beauty that were produced over the centuries, the decorative arts, and those that created them, were generally not seen to be as “high” as fine art and artists. A goldsmith may be a fine craftsman, creating incredible work, but he was not an “artist” in the same standing as a painter or sculptor.

But towards the end of the 19th century, that began to change. The Aesthetic Movement, which prized beauty in all its forms, helped elevate the decorative arts to the status of “real” art. That was due, in no small part, to the amazing amount of artistic genius that was at work in the decorative arts at the time. One of these great geniuses was Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Most people are familiar with his famous stained glass windows; the “art” in those is obvious if you’ve ever seen them, especially up close. Many people are also familiar with his stained glass lamps, with shades crafted in hundreds of pieces of glass, portraying flowers, insects, birds and other forms of nature.

The Tiffany studios also crafted other kinds of glass, forms that today are called “art glass.” Through a great deal of experimenting over a period of decades, Tiffany and his chemists, glassblowers and artists reinvented colored glass. They mixed gold and other minerals into the molten glass and produced colors and textures that had never been seen before. The glass blowers shaped incredible decorative objects such as lamp bases, vases, dishes, glassware, bowls and lampshades.

The men who worked for Tiffany learned an incredible amount about this new glass, which Tiffany named Favrile glass. They either learned it from him, or experimented for him; it was a time of great shared collaboration, all under the Tiffany name. But it was inevitable that as time went on, some of these glassblowers, chemists and artisans felt the need to leave Tiffany and make their own names in the glass world. For many, why be an employee of the great man, when you have the talent to be your own great man? So they left, often with a lot of bad feelings on both sides.

Thus was the case with Martin Bach, Sr. He was born in 1862 in Alsace-Lorraine to German parents. He learned the glass trade in France, at the Saint-Louis Glass Factory, where he specialized in mixing the chemicals that changed clear glass into colored glass. Martin Bach married Anne-Marie Geisser in 1889, in Paris. They came to America in 1891, with two daughters, Jennie and Louis, who were born in France, and later had a son, Martin, Jr., who was born in Corona.

In 1892 he was hired by Louis Comfort Tiffany to be the chemist for his new factory called the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, which Tiffany had just established in Corona, Queens. Bach was Tiffany’s first batch-mixer, or chemist. Over the next eight years, he would work with Tiffany, experimenting with chemicals and techniques for creating the incredibly beautiful glassworks that Tiffany is famous for. But after eight years, the two parted ways. There are no records as to why, but historians of the decorative arts all agree that the parting was because of “difficulties with management.”

Someone else who had those same difficulties was glassblower Thomas Johnson. He was an English immigrant and had also been with the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company from its inception. He left Tiffany around the same time that Bach did, although it does not seem as if their leaving was coordinated or planned. But, sometimes great things come out of coincidence, and so it was that Bach and Johnson decided to form their own glass company.

In 1901, Martin Bach, Sr., and Thomas Johnson, along with Nicholas Bach, Lena Scholtz and Adolph Demuth formed the Quezal Art Glass and Decorating Company. They named their company for the quetzal (aka quetzal) bird of South America, a rare beautiful bird with brilliant iridescent green plumage, a brilliant red breast and a bright yellow and green crown of feathers. The quetzal was the symbol of the ancient Aztec kings, and the feathers of the bird decorated their ceremonial cloaks. It was a perfect symbol for this company.

The Quezal Glass Company opened a factory on the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond Road, in Maspeth, near the Brooklyn border. (Some sources say the factory was in Brooklyn, while others call it Queens. Some say Maspeth, the map says Ridgewood. I’m sure someone will correct me if I am in error.) They began producing beautiful glass objects that rivaled Tiffany glass for its beauty and form. Experts in the decorative glass field say that Quezal glass was the first real competition for Tiffany, who no doubt was not happy about that.

According to an article on Quezal glass by Malcolm Neil MacNeil, appearing in the “Journal of Antiques and Collectables”, “One of the most prized characteristics of Quezal art glass is the shimmering and dazzling brilliance reflected in the iridescent surfaces on the interior as well as exterior of the glass. The radiant rainbow colors in metallic hues, including gold, purple, blue, green, and pink, to name only a few, were certainly inspired by the quetzal and its feathers. Not surprisingly, lustrous feathers, in shades of opal, gold, emerald, and blue, are among the most common decorative motifs encountered on Quezal glass.”

By 1904, there were about fifty glassmakers employed at Quezal. The company lines consisted of vases, bowls and compotes, drinking glasses and lampshades. The improvements in electricity and light bulbs had inspired lighting companies to design fanciful new kinds of lights, and all of the glass companies, including Tiffany and Quezal, had risen to the occasion to create shades for those lights, or in the case of Tiffany, manufacture the entire lamps themselves. Quezal did created glass lamp bodies, but is best known for their iridescent and spun glass lampshades.

The firm was creating objects during the height of the Art Nouveau period, when the naturalistic forms of nature were recreated in wood, metal and especially glass. Many of Quezal’s most famous pieces resemble flowers such as crocuses, jack-in-the-pulpits, tulips and calla lilies. Tiffany’s pieces are known for their exuberant forms and flights of fancy, Quezal is famous for their much more tightly controlled, but absolute perfection.

Glassblower Thomas Johnson didn’t stay with Quetzal very long. He left in 1907, for another glass company in Massachusetts. Maurice Kelly, a Corona native and another early Quezal glassblower, left even earlier, in 1904, and went to Tiffany. Although the company’s products were highly prized, the company itself had a hard time remaining solvent. One might say that they had too many creative people, but not enough business people. But they struggled on, and branched out in their products. They created glass base pieces that were bought by silver companies like Gorham Silver, which added their own silver overlays to the glass, creating beautiful works that remain among their most collectable items today.

By 1918, Martin Bach, Sr. had bought out all of the other original investors. But there were big problems with the company. Both of the Bach daughters married glass men who had joined the company. One of Bach’s sons-in-law was also the company vice president. His name was Conrad Valshing. Both sons-in-law had a falling out with Bach, and broke with the company and took one of the company glassblowers, a man named Paul Frank, with them. They started their own glass company, Lustre Art Company, which made glass virtually identical to Quezal’s, up through 1929.

The competition from Lustre Art and changes in public tastes in glass were devasating to Quezal. It didn’t help Martin Bach’s health problems, either. He died of cancer in 1921. His son, Martin Jr. inherited the company, all of its formulas, and all of the problems. Martin Jr. couldn’t keep it going, and had to get financial backing from a family friend, Dr. John Ferguson. Ferguson brought in other backers, and the company was soon being run by people with no experience in glass whatsoever. Martin Jr. became the general manager. He couldn’t take it, and quit, moving with his family to Ohio.

Another glass blower, Emil Larson, joined the company. It was renamed the Quezal Glass Manufacturing Company. A 1924 catalog, the only one known to exist, shows that the company line was now unimaginative, with nothing very special about it. Larson didn’t stay long, but before leaving, got in touch with Bach, telling him that he thought the company wouldn’t be around much longer. He quit, and joined Bach, both working for the Durand Art Glass Division of the Vineland Flint Glassworks, in Vineland, New Jersey.

After 1924, the company got out of the art glass business, and began making headlights and other industrial glass items. It’s not known when they went out of business. The great Quezal Art Glass Company was essentially gone after 1924; the creators of some of this century’s most beautiful art glass works only lasted a generation.Today, the factory building at 1604 Metropolitan Avenue is gone.

Today, Quezal Art Glass is in some of the most important museums in the world, including the Metropolitan Art Museum. It is highly valued by collectors, and is really expensive. It’s still incredibly beautiful and unique. And it was all made in Queens.

(Photograph:Quezal Art Glass lampshades. Knightarts.com)

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