So I have an appointment with in interesting bunch of folks today that I thought you'd get a chuckle out of. About 3 years ago I was commissioned to do a large restoration on a bunch of original Jacque Gruber, Daum Nancy France 1914, SG windows. I fixed and engineered all that I could that didn't need the glass. I obtained a close texture from Kokomo, but it wasn't good enough. I emailed, and phoned every glass maker in the entire world, with no luck. You see the client is Russian oil, and money was no object on this one. It's now a year later and they hired this Russian engineering "genius" to figure out how to get this done for us. He's been in Russia working on this now for 2 years! You can't make this stuff up. He found a small factory, and had a machinist hand make a steel drum to roll over the warm glass. These people had ZERO glass experience, so they had to teach themselves every step of the way. They experimented with color, texture, opacity, etc... and sent me samples every few months. Sorry to be so long...... My contact here, the office manager, calls to tell me it looks good and it's ready. I ask if anybody tested it for cutability. They freak out. What's that? I tell them. No one there knows anything about actually cutting glass! It's now 3 years, and I've had these babies in my back room waiting to get fixed. He flies to NYC today, (he speaks no english at all), with his personal interpretor to hand deliver the glass to me, to see if I can cut it. He and his spanish speaking chauffeur carry in 2 large crates of glass. (I needed about 3 square feet). He speaks, the interpretor speaks, I say excuse me cause her accent is so thick..... I answer.... she tells him in Russian, the secretary is babbling english, the driver is babbling spanish.... IT WAS HYSTERICAL. The glass was fine by the way. Only in America folks!
- posted
20 years ago