Glass Crown

For various reasons, I have been thinking about manufacturing and small American towns and communities in the hinterland.  We’ll get back to these thoughts soon, but first here is a winsome artifact of this bygone age: a glass pageant crown from Dunkirk, Indiana.  This crown was part of an annual tradition: it was used to crown the annual “Cinderella, Queen of Glass”, during “Glass Days” a local festival in Dunkirk, which had an amazingly robust craft glass industry (not unlike some of the small cities and towns I know from West Virginia).  Cinderella’s crown was lovingly handmade and has some of the finer stylistic elements which I like in American glass.  You can find it these days in the Glass Museum at Dunkirk, which sounds like a pleasant excursion, and not nearly so forboding as the palaces, vaults, and cathedral tombs, where some of the other crowns we have featured here are located.

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