Master glass As avid collector adds to his cache of Venetian-inspired Chalet designs, it’s still all about the thrill of the hunt By: David Sanderson Posted: 12:00 PM CDT Friday, Jul. 5, 2024

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/07/2024 (430 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HOLLAND — Click, click, click.

Ken Huss fetches down a reddish-green fingertip vase, jokingly telling a visitor he may want to take a step back. Apparently, the vessel-in-question, one of dozens of ultra-colourful adornments Huss keeps that were produced by Chalet Artistic Glass, a Canadian company that operated from 1962 to 1975, carries traces of uranium.

Not so much that we’re in imminent danger of turning into the Incredible Hulk, he adds with a wink. Still, it is his understanding that the handblown accessory contains enough of the radioactive element that if it was held up to a Geiger counter, it would almost certainly register a reading.

“It’s a shame you didn’t come at night, when this one and a few more like it are backlit with a black light,” he continues, standing in his neat-as-a-pin living room, where the bulk of his glass menagerie is attractively exhibited on clear shelves he built with the help of a local fabricator.

“When the light reacts with the uranium, it creates this beautiful, ambient glow. People walking past the house after dark have commented how attractive everything looks through the front window and they’re 100 per cent right. The shades of green you get, almost alien in nature, are simply outstanding.”

Huss, 66, started collecting Chalet glass in earnest in 2009. His earliest association with the Venetian-inspired line stretches back to the mid-1960s, however, when he and his parents lived on Rosewarne Avenue, in Old St. Vital.

While he can’t state it for a fact, he is pretty sure that an elaborate ornamental bowl his mother had propped on a windowsill, where it “twinkled in the sunshine,” was made by the Cornwall, Ont.-based firm.

That’s probably a safe bet.

Chalet glass, which traces its roots to Montreal, where a trio of Italian-born glassmakers founded what was originally called Industries de Verre et Miroirs, later changed to Murano Glass, in the late 1950s, was hugely popular. Not just in Canada but all over the world.

There was a period during its 13-year run when Chalet, a name the owners reportedly settled on because they felt it sounded Canadian, was turning out tens of thousands of pieces on an annual basis, in as many as 400 different shapes, including birds, baskets, goblets and paperweights.

Huss, a father of two grown sons, was 21 when he moved from Winnipeg to Yellowknife. He worked at a series of jobs before establishing the Nor-Art International Gallery, a venue that, according to internet sources, showcased the “finest art and artists from Canada’s majestic high North and Arctic.”

The gallery was a roaring success, Huss says, but he sold it along with its contents in December 2004 after receiving an offer that would have been difficult to refuse. Following the sale, he and his wife returned to Winnipeg, where they purchased a home on the same street he grew up on.

He was poking through a flea market in the city a couple of years later when he spotted a glass ashtray, bluish in colour, priced at $10, the underside of which bore an etching reading Chalet Artistic Glass. He scooped it up.

Curious about his find, he typed “Chalet” into a search engine on his computer when he returned home, only to learn that the item in his hands was probably 40 years old, and had been made in Canada. Owing to his ongoing appreciation for Canadian artists from the North, that last bit of news interested him to no end.

Huss, a collector-type by nature who had 21 cars before he was 21 years old, began keeping an eye out for Chalet everywhere he went, pretty much.

Initially, he wasn’t overly particular when it came to style or condition. Discoveries ranged from functional items such as fruit bowls and water pitchers to decorative relics mimicking Christmas trees to futuristic-looking mementos he calls “long-arm stretches.” (“Think mid-century modernism at its wildest,” was how one review from the ’60s described some of Chalet’s more fantastical specimens.)

The problem was, larger productions, as tall as 60 centimetres, can suck up a lot of real estate, so he eventually had to narrow his focus somewhat.

“At one point I was up to about 300 (pieces), which admittedly was a bit overwhelming,” he says, mentioning he’s been told he has one of the largest collections of Chalet glass swans in North America.

By the time he moved to Holland, Man., about 50 kilometres south of Portage la Prairie, 18 months ago following a divorce, he had culled that down to 150 or so.

If that still sounds like a lot, it’s not, he says. He is regularly in touch with Chalet collectors who have thousands of pieces, many of which are unfortunately stored away in boxes.

“Except that will never be me. To my way of thinking, if you have beautiful objects like these and you can’t see them and enjoy them, why bother?”

Deborah Patterson is the author of six books on Chalet glass, including Chalet Artistic Glass Collectors’ Guide and Catalogue, an exhaustive 248-page tome that contains close to 1,100 photographs of some 1,500 individual examples. Patterson, a B.C.-based interior designer who became keenly interested in Chalet glass after noticing a small arrangement in a client’s abode, says the company was 100 per cent a Canadian success story.

Chalet received worldwide exposure at the Expo ’67 World’s Fair in Montreal, when designs made to resemble maple leaves were showcased for visiting foreign dignitaries, Patterson says when reached at her condo in Vancouver.

“As well, (Chalet) was brought along by trade delegations and ambassadors everywhere in the world, and was in place at literally every foreign embassy around the globe. Chalet was very well-known and very well-regarded,” she says.

Patterson says the type of people who actively collect Chalet glass is all over the map, from “newbies” in their early 20s who are drawn to the bold ambers and purples, to those in their 70s and 80s, whose childhood homes likely would have had Chalet bowls filled with candy or whatnot spread here and there. (Ha, not on your life, she laughs, when asked if she ever uses any of her 200 specimens for their intended purpose; say as a candlestick holder or plant receptacle.)

“It’s an absolutely wonderful community and because Chalet is no longer as easy to find as it was perhaps 10 years ago, a lot of collectors, myself included, will buy pieces we spot, even if we don’t have room for them or aren’t interested in a certain shade,” says Patterson, who also helped stage a major Chalet exhibit in Cornwall, the company’s birthplace, in 2010.

“Our feeling is you can’t leave a piece behind, so we’ll be like ‘hey, I just found a polar bear, is anybody interested?’ and within minutes it’s off to a good home.” (In her opinion, the mid-1970s energy crisis had a great deal to do with Chalet’s demise, “not only in the cost of shipping, but in heating the furnaces and things like that, too.”)

Back in Holland, Huss says there is obviously a monetary component attached to his cache, but for him it’s never been about the investment.

“I do know that side of things very well but it’s not my bag. In fact, I’ve given away more glass than I can count to people who I thought would appreciate it,” he says, mentioning he continues to look for rare pieces, dubbed unicorns, and that he still gets a thrill from “turning over lots of rocks” to check for a Chalet insignia.

“At the same time, I’m no spring chicken (yes, he has poultry-shaped pieces!) and could get hit by a proverbial bus tomorrow, so the plan is to inventory every last one I have and place a value on it, so that if something happens to me, at least my two boys will have a sense of what they’ve got.”

Huss, who manages a 1,800-member Facebook group devoted to Chalet as well as other vintage Canadian art-glass houses including Lorraine, EDAG and Altaglass, chuckles when asked the question on every reader’s lips: how much dusting is involved?!?

“It’s actually not that bad, especially because a lot of what I have are in enclosed units. People always assume I spend a few hours (dusting) every week but that isn’t the case. Hardly ever, really.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca