Flacon I, 1989

  • Howard Ben Tré, American, 1949 - 2020

Cast glass, brass, gold leaf, pigmented waxes

  • Overall: 50 × 15 × 9 inches (127 × 38.1 × 22.9 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, Lenora and Alfred Glancy Foundation Fund, with funds from Marvin and Betty Danto, Mrs. William B. Giles in memory of her husband, Modern Decorative Arts Group, Dorothy and Byron Gerson, and Jean Sosin

1990.15

Ben Tré has broken away from other studio glass artists by working primarily in an industrial environment. He has perfected a series of sand-casting techniques that enables him to create large glass forms. In a factory in Brooklyn, New York, the molten glass is poured into resin-bonded sand molds. The glass forms are then returned to Ben Tré's studio in Providence, where he sandblasts the glass and finishes the surfaces by adding copper and gold leaf, wax, and pigment. Ben Tré explores the translucent quality of the glass as it interacts with the metal core and gold leaf surface.

The artist

Charles Cowles Gallery, Inc., (New York, New York), artist representative

1990, transfer to DIA by purchase 2/28/1990.

"Howard Ben Tre." American Craft (April/May 1990): 76.

Howard Ben Tré, Flacon I, 1989, cast glass, brass, gold leaf, pigmented waxes. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Lenora and Alfred Glancy Foundation Fund, with funds from Marvin and Betty Danto, et al., 1990.15.