The Chalet Artistic Glass Collectors’ Guide and Catalogue

My 5th book, Chalet Artistic Glass Collectors’ Guide and Catalogue is now available. It is an interactive download on a flash drive. Nicknamed “the Colossus” as it is 248 pages with over 1,080 photos and 25 catalog pages. It presents over 1,550 verified individual pieces of Chalet art glass.

It is dedicated to the Chalet artists. I have been so fortunate to have established and maintained a relationship with several of the Chalet artists and their family members since mounting the 2010 Chalet retrospective “The Art and Artisans of Chalet Glass” in Cornwall. Indeed – it was doing so that encouraged me to write about and research Chalet. So, I am especially thrilled to be able to show, for the first time, in “Chalet Artistic Glass Collectors’ Guide and Catalogue” pieces that can be directly attributed to specific Chalet artists. A special note, on page 226, there is a picture of Maestri Panizzon and Gatto and Chalet artist Gianfranco Guarnieri. This photo was taken in 2010 during a professional photography studio shoot for page 10 of “The Shapes and Colours of Chalet Glass.” Therefore, it has a special place in my heart so I am very pleased to be able to share it once again.

Like the 4 that came before, “Chalet Artistic Glass Collectors’ Guide and Catalogue” would not have been possible without the Chalet collecting community having come together. In particular, it came about because of the insistence of a 50 Shades group member that a digital update and expansion of “The Shapes and Colours of Chalet Glass” (published 2011) was feasible. As in preceding books, I concentrated on using photos from numerous photography shoots with professionals in conjunction with photos from other collectors. And as always – knowledge, permission and/or photo use credit given to those members. I could not do or have done any of my books without the help from many other collectors and the support of our glass community - a point that I have made over and over but bears repeating yet once more. It is much appreciated. I would like to also thank all of them again for voting on which piece would grace the cover page. I just could not decide – so took to the group!

I thought a “launch” video would be the best way of giving a sense of what the book is like. Included is the book’s “Table of Contents” and a random selection of pages. You will see that the overwhelming focus is upon the “shapes and colours of Chalet glass.” Therefore, the ‘Chalet Artistic Glass Collectors’ Guide and Catalogue’ does not detail Chalet’s history, the artists who worked there or how the art they produced was made. Nor does it pinpoint Chalet branding, marketing and distribution or the “Similar yet Different” Canadian glass houses of the Chalet era. Those topics (and more) are extensively covered in “Chalet Crystal Clear”. So, as promised and intended, they work as both stand-alone resources as well as a companion pieces to compliment and complete each other. Please refer to the “Table of Contents” from “Chalet Crystal Clear” as illustration for how the two are designed to work together as well as their respective stand-alone merits.

As mentioned above, the format of this book is different from my earlier books – it is not printed but is a download from a USB flash drive. This is because it is too big to have been printed as a soft cover book and the costs of a hard cover book this size would have been prohibitive. The flash drive has been loaded with two versions of the guide. Both have identical content but each has just a slightly different level of interactivity from the other. One is a simple, non-interactive PDF - this can be opened on any device with a program that can read PDFs, such as Adobe Acrobat or any default reader (most computers or devices these days ship with a PDF reading program). The other, with the extension '.epub', is an interactive e-publication. This version has 'active, clickable buttons' to help you navigate - the table of contents, side tabs, as well as a 'return to contents' button are all clickable and will take you to that specific page. Most computers also come with a standard program to open e-publications. In the rare instance you have trouble opening either file, it may be because you don't have a program that can read them. Free versions of software to access them can easily be found online and a note re same will be included with the flash drive.