Pascal and the Dunbar Glass

When one thinks of glass, many different images come to mind. But talk to international glass sculptor, Pascal, and she will undoubtedly tell you about “Dunbar glass!” For it was Dunbar glass, more specifically, glass from the Pennsylvania Wire Glass Company in Dunbar that changed her life and let her fulfill her life’s desire of sculpting glass with hammer and chisel.

Born in Montana in 1914, Suzanne Pascal, now 97 and living in Beverly Hills, was born with a hearing problem. The daughter of a French father and Irish mother, Pascal’s mother communicated with her through drawings which increased her interest in painting. Her father died when she was four and she and her mother moved to Seattle.

Her mother realized that Pascal had talent and so she sent her to study in Italy and France. Through surgery, she regained some hearing at age 17. As she achieved success in the art world, Pascal, who preferred to be known by her last name, eventually became a painter, selling her paintings on the streets of Paris along with other artists.

While she achieved success with her art, and also her steel sculpting, she still wanted to carve glass. So she spent many years experimenting with several types of glass, only to fail since it all shattered when hammer and chisel were applied. That is, until a Pittsburgh friend, who was trying to purchase the brick from an old glass plant in Dunbar, came upon a treasure trove of gloriously colored glass. Glass that brought Pascal across the United States in the early 1960s to the small town of Dunbar. There she found an entire floor covered with a type of tempered glass that she was able to carve with hammer and chisel. She spent two years in Dunbar before she decided to mortgage her Beverly Hills home and move the glass to California. One of her first sculpted works was “Big Sam.” He was the former glass employee who helped fire the small furnace that kept her warm while she was working at the glass plant property. One wonders what may have happened to the “Big Sam” work.

Pascal cont'd...