Corning Museum of Glass Visit
Last December Adam and I took a trip to the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY. Most people know Corning from things like CorningWare and Pyrex. And for the people who have no idea what those are they looked like this:
You may have seen them at family gatherings like Thanksgiving or Christmas and your parents or grandparents would put things like casseroles in them. And I may have dated myself here because I remember ones quite similar in my house growing up and I know my parents still own at least one CorningWare dish. Most people are more familiar with Pyrex measuring cups like the one below:
But all of these are made by the Corning company and you can see tons of it at the Corning Museum of Glass, or CMOG as people call it here.
A Little History...
What a lot of people don't know are all the uses that this glass has and how it shaped the world for the better. CorningWare and Pyrex are unique in the fact that they can withstand heat without shattering or expanding. Pyrex was the original heat resistant glass made for railroad lanterns and other industrial uses. CorningWare came later during an accidental furnace malfunction when the Pyrex glass was heated too hot. When the inventor Donald Stookey took the glass out of the furnace instead of a molten mess it was solid and milky white, and when it slipped out of his tongs instead of shattering on the ground it bounced and did not break. And thus CorningWare was born.
Aside from the cool history you can also see glass blowing classes at the museum, they have an extensive gift shop of artisan glass and other Pyrex goods, as well as many artist and history exhibits. Below you can see some of our pictures from the trip. There were so many amazing things to see it's hard to go through it all in one day.
Comments