A New Years Visit To The Redlands Glass Museum
January is always an interesting month. It comes after a slew of celebrations, communing with family and marks a new start. A New Year to make your life anew. It’s cold, even in SoCal. In SoCal you can have a sunny brilliant day one day and the next it’s cold and dark, snow clouds hover close to the earth casting gloom over everything.
On such a day, I made a trip to a place I had been meaning to visit for several years. Several years ago I attended an antique glass auction to benefit the Redlands Glass Museum. It was such an unique experience and the glass so beautiful, I promised myself I would visit the museum one day.
Redlands is beautiful city located in the Far North Eastern portion of the Inland Empire along the 10 freeway and is the last large city before you get to Palm Springs, which is about 45 miles East of Redlands. Redlands is the home to a multitude of historic homes and mansions. The types of architecture represented is abundant and it’s worth a day trip just to drive up and down the old boulevards to drive past the old mansions and homes. Redlands founders made their fortunes in Citrus, like many of the neighboring cities.
The Redlands Glass Museum is located on the Northeast sector of town and located in a home that was built in 1905 by Jerome Seymour who owned a successful and popular mill in Redlands. The home is a large Queen Anne bungalow and embellished with all sorts of lovely cornices and trim. Guest parking is to the rear of the house. There is parking for differently abled guests and a ramp to the rear entrance.
Everyone enters through the rear and the front doors are kept locked.
Admission is voluntary donation of 3.00 and they allow photography, which is wonderful. The volunteers are dedicated and know everything you every wanted to know about historic American glass. The museum has the largest collection of historic glass West of the Mississippi. A large part of the collection was manufactured East of the Mississippi in great glass factories.
It was a different time and those fragile treasures created in those factories have survived, (some almost 200 years), and now are cared for and cherished by the museum in Redlands. The museum is constantly receiving donations and rotate collections on a regular basis.
The house itself, is a treasure and well-preserved. The carved moldings are in their original condition and exquisitely carved. There are transoms above the doors that open to circulate air, (a personal favorite). There are several rooms that center around a foyer and then move back through the house plan spaced evenly and parallel to each other. The front entrance is no longer utilized and guests are asked to enter through the back door which has a convenient ramp for those of us who can’t take stairs. There is a welcome room with a nice clean bathroom to the right for guests use and a small gift shop located in the old kitchen.
Each room is filled with case filled with various collections of antique glass. My favorites were the depression glass and children’s glass objects (child size dishes, cups and salt cellars). The rooms are filled with sparkling light in all shade of the rainbow reflecting off the glass. Each collection is carefully marked and described so that you know what you are looking at. The docents at the museum are friendly and excited to share the unique history of vintage glass and how they came to love antique glass objects. The stories are fascinating and I would have loved to pull up a chair and spend the day chatting.
For more information and history, The Historical Glass Museum Foundation has a wonderful website full of information to help you plan your visit: