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Sunday, January 19, 2003

By Joe Smydo, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

At first blush, Gail Krause seemed a lot like First Love, the Duncan & Miller Glass Co. pattern she admired so much: delicate, dignified and sophisticated.

But perhaps the Hobnail pattern describes her better. Her hardscrabble upbringing had left bumps, but these gave form and texture to her remarkable life.

Krause, who died Dec. 6 at age 77, rose from poverty to become an authority on the George Duncan & Sons glassware manufactured on Pittsburgh's South Side from 1865 to 1892 and the Duncan & Miller glassware made in Washington from 1893 to 1955.

"We used to call her the Duncan Lady," longtime friend Edith Bails said.

Years after the furnaces cooled, Krause interviewed former employees to learn how the glassware was made and to gain insights into the patterns they produced. She studied others' Duncan collections while building her own and buying and selling pieces at Krause's, her Washington antique store. At the time she died of complications from strokes, Krause had hundreds of pieces that her lawyer, Thomas C. Panian, valued at about $100,000.

Krause published "The Encyclopedia of Duncan Glass" in 1976. She presented photographs and illustrations of the glassware, offered a brief company history, provided background on some patterns, gave the dimensions of some pieces and included an old company catalog and advertisements.

"It was really the only reference we did have for many years," said Susan Allen, an owner of Antiques Downtown in Washington.

Invoking the company slogan, Krause dedicated the book "to all the people whose love, efforts and talents produced the loveliest glassware in America." Panian described the encyclopedia, now in its ninth printing, as the "Duncan Bible."

Krause also published a monograph in 1976, "A Pictorial History of Duncan & Miller Glass," that gave an in-depth history of the plant, workers and production process. Some of the photos included in the monograph hang in a museum-style display room at her shop at 97 W. Wheeling St.

She published a third work, "The Years of Duncan," in 1980. She also published a price guide, gave talks, was a fixture at the annual Duncan glass show in Washington and wrote for glass club publications.

"She had a following," Allen said.

When Duncan enthusiasts stopped at Antiques Downtown, Allen said, they sometimes were delighted to learn they could visit Krause's shop in a landmark house and carriage house two blocks away.

Krause, at one time a bridal consultant at S.A. Meyer Co., first sold glassware from her home then opened a shop in Washington's Tylerdale section in the early to mid 1970s.

She took a job cleaning out the West Wheeling Street house when the occupant died. She fell in love with the house, built in 1875, and she and her late husband, Jack, bought it and moved the store there in 1986.

A tour of the shop amounted to a trip back in time.

Gail Krause -- bespectacled, stooped in later years and barely dinging the scale at 90 pounds -- didn't limit herself to Duncan glass. She filled 16 rooms with a wide range of antiques and collectibles, from dolls to jewelry to furniture.

"She was very knowledgeable about anything that was in that store," Panian said.

For now, the shop remains open and in the care of Carol Reichert, Krause's trusted employee, friend and neighbor.

Panian said the contents will be sold this spring or summer at an auction he believes will be heavily attended. Should the sale be held at the shop, he said, the street probably will have to be closed to traffic.

He said the house also will be sold, but not during the auction.

Krause best liked the lacy First Love pattern and used the Teardrop pattern, accented with small beads, at her South Strabane home.

It's unclear precisely when or why Krause took an interest in the Duncan glassware that once was a staple of the Washington economy.

"Gail liked anything beautiful ... and Duncan glass was beautiful," longtime friend Margaret Stimmell said.

Of course, said her son, John Krause of Seattle, Wash., she also made money on it.

"My mother was a success -- I don't want to say in spite of her background," John Krause said. "She just did it through pure, absolute, adamant hard work."

Gail Irene Butcher was born Aug. 11, 1925. Her parents raised three daughters and a son in the area of Washington's West End where the Duncan & Miller plant on Jefferson Avenue dominated the landscape.

John Krause said childhood travails during the Great Depression gave his mother an "ironclad work ethic" and self-doubts she would fight all her life.

"She never graduated from high school," Krause said. "That was always one of her great hidden secrets in life. She had to drop out in 10th grade to support her family, which was quite poor."

She took a job at a drugstore near the Washington County Courthouse and during that time met her husband.

When friends urged Jack Krause to join them on a group date, he agreed when they promised to find him a girl he hadn't met before. John Krause said he doesn't know how his mother came to join the group that day. He said his father's family at first didn't approve of the girl from the poor side of town but later came to adore her.

During his World War II service with the Army Air Corps, Jack Krause regularly wrote to his love. On each envelope, he drew a cartoon, and some of those drawings are part of Washington County Historical Society's exhibit of "trench art" at the LeMoyne House in Washington.

After the Krauses married in 1945, he continued drawing for her. Some of his sketches of Duncan glassware appeared in Gail Krause's books.

Frances Bones of Hart, Texas, published "The Book of Duncan Glass" three years before Krause's encyclopedia hit the market. However, glass enthusiast and author George Fogg of Boston, Mass., said Krause's work was more thorough and remains the standard for collectors, even though other books on Duncan have appeared in more recent years.

The encyclopedia isn't perfect.

Fogg, who wrote Krause's obituary for the quarterly publication of National American Glass Club, said parts of the book are outdated now. And Lance Coalson, president of Father & Son Publishing, the Tallahassee, Fla., company that has printed the last few editions, lamented the poor quality of some photographs.

The books initially were self-published, and John Krause said his dad was a little nervous about fronting the money for Gail Krause's first writing project.

"My mother did it with no qualifications. ... It was one of the things that she figured out all by herself, God bless her," Krause said.

John Krause said his father was easygoing, a storyteller with elfin qualities, while his quiet mother always tried to project the grace of a Duncan swan. She struck guests as the consummate hostess, dressed immaculately and showed the same meticulousness in business affairs.

Silverware received a vigorous polishing before it went on display. Newly acquired dolls were stripped and their clothes washed and pressed. Spare copies of the encyclopedia were wrapped in plastic for safekeeping.

John Krause said he once asked his dad why he didn't retire from his job at Washington Steel and learned it was because his father was afraid of being put to work in the shop. "I will never get out," his dad told him.

Jack Krause called his wife "Rubber Butt" because she never seemed to sit down. John Krause said the frenetic pace sprang from her inferiority complex and contributed to her death.

"She spent her entire life trying to prove she was a worthwhile individual. I don't think anyone ever doubted that except my mother," he said.

Joe Smydo can be reached by at jsmydo@post-gazette.com or 724-746-8812.