Dr. Robert Howard Brill

1929 - 2021

Dr. Robert Howard Brill
Corning - Born in Irvington, NJ on 7 May 1929, Dr. Robert Howard Brill died peacefully at home in the company of his wife, daughter, and cat on 7 April 2021. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Margaret Rose Brill, Professor Emerita, Corning Community College; his only child, daughter Elizabeth Rose Brill, glass artist and marine research assistant; three cats, Montepulciano, Peeper, and LCee; sister-in-law Susan Rose Reardon (Walter); and several nephews and nieces. In addition to his parents, Floretta (Howard) and Fred Francis Brill, Sr., Bob was predeceased by his brother, Fred Francis Brill, Jr. (Elaine).
Dr. Robert H. (Bob) Brill, Research Scientist, worked for 51 years for The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY. Wide-ranging in his interests, he studied when and where particular glass objects were made, how glass was made, what it was used for, and how it was traded, from its beginning 3,500 years ago to fakes made in the 20th century. Known internationally through participation in international organizations and symposia, he authored more than 190 papers. The culmination of his research was the publication of a monumental three-volume compendium, Chemical Analyses of Early Glasses. That publication contains detailed analyses, site reports, and conclusions from his study of more than 3,600 examples of historical glass dating between 1500 BCE and ca. 1800 CE, from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Roman and Islamic worlds, Europe, Africa, East Asia, and the Americas.
Bob received a B.S. in chemistry from Upsala College in East Orange, NJ, and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. He returned to Upsala as an associate professor of chemistry before joining the Corning Museum to found its Scientific Research Department in 1960, ten years after the Museum's founding. From 1972–1975 he served as Director of the Museum, leading its recovery from the disastrous flood of 1972.
His early work focused on the study of medieval stained glass, both the technology used to create it, and also on its weathering and conservation. He also researched and endeavored to find ways to stabilize glass exhibiting crizzling – the gradual deterioration of unstable glass made using defective formulas, mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and China. Using a late 17th-century bottle fragment, he even discovered that it was possible to date glass objects precisely by counting individual layers in their weathering crusts.
He was one of the earliest Western scientists to focus on the history and technology of Chinese glass. As a Distinguished Scholar sponsored by the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China, he lectured in China in 1982, 1984, 1990 and 1995, and while he was there examined objects and collected archeological fragments. Through these contacts, he established some of the earliest collaborations among archaeologists, curators, and scientific researchers between the two nations.
In 1984, he attended the International Symposium on Glass in Beijing; the book of the proceedings of that conference, edited by him and published by Corning in 1992 – Scientific Research in Early Chinese Glass – is one of the earliest works focusing on analyses of early Chinese glass. For many years, he traveled throughout the Far East and central Asia to collect fragments of glass found along the Silk Road, the trade route that stretched from China to the Mediterranean for two thousand years, from the 2nd century BCE to the 18th century. His goal was to discover the links between glassmakers of the eastern Mediterranean and China and to understand how glassmaking technology was transmitted and when.
Working with a philologist and archeologists on texts found on 3,000-year-old Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets that included a "recipe" for glassmaking led Bob to connect with a factory in Herat, Afghanistan, where he discovered that the processes they used echoed almost precisely those described in the texts. Bob was inspired to document the work of that factory and, in 1977, led a team of seven people including cinematographer, Elliot Erwitt, to Herat to produce the award-winning film, The Glassmakers of Herat. The film, available online, is very moving in its depiction of a close-knit family in what soon became a war-ravaged country.
Among many awards, Dr. Brill received The Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America in 1990. He served on the International Commission on Glass (ICG), the world's leading organization of glass scientists and technologists from 1962 until his death and organized their Committee on Archeometry of Glass, dedicated to the scientific study of historical glass and to its conservation. He was chairman of the committee until 2004 and vice-chairman thereafter. He also received the ICG's William E. S. Turner Award in 2004 and was a founding member of the American Institute for Conservation.
Bob retired from the Corning Museum in 2008, becoming Research Scientist Emeritus to focus on readying the third, summative volume of Chemical Analyses of Early Glasses for publication.
His was a stunning and productive career, but those facts and honors don't do him justice as a person. He was a popular lecturer who could make dry data come alive with meaning and who was even able to make graphs of chemical analyses interesting. As a fastidious author, Dr. Brill worked carefully in expressing every thought and conclusion clearly and concisely in his publications. Indeed, he strongly disliked being edited. An indication of the care with which he approached his writing was the presence of an Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, complete with magnifying glass, on his desk.
Most of Bob's international travel was work-related. For him travel was always exciting, but it was especially pleasing to him when his wife and daughter could travel with him. Bob and his family traveled to Sanibel Island, FL first in 1971, where he immediately fell in love with a particular beach. It became his favorite and after miles-long strolls, occasionally finding just the right shell or two, he would return to a certain spot to sit for hours upon hours watching the birds and waves, a carefully chosen book for the trip unopened at his side. Often the same book would return year after year, but it never captured his interest as much as the seaside did. He returned to that beach for more than 40 years. He also loved photography, later videography, ornithology, felines of every sort, including Garfield. He was a New York Yankees fan, preferring watching, not listening to the games.
One of Bob's private passions was constructing miniature dioramas that he called "Mouse Houses" for his daughter, Elizabeth. Each contained a domestic scene of a family of mice. Four were Christmas-themed, and several others were set on Christmas Eve, a nod to the date on which they were presented to her. Others depicted a scene relating to some event in her life from the previous year––a Victorian hot air balloon ride after she'd been to Albuquerque, early 19th-century bell ringers at work after they'd been to England, actors performing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" after they went to Stratford, etc. Elizabeth still has them – 27 in all.
Friends of Bob's will remember his gentle smile when they visit "The People Wall" at Corning City Hall and see his photograph. Altogether, Bob Brill was a remarkable and caring person who shared his knowledge freely with colleagues and friends around the world. While he will be mourned, those who knew him and called him friend and colleague will know how fortunate they were to have known him.
According to Bob's wishes there are no formal services planned. Those wishing to do so may make contributions in Bob's memory to the Chemung County Humane Society & SPCA (https://www.chemungspca.org) where LCee was adopted or the Institute of Nautical Archaeology Foundation (https://nauticalarch.org/ina-foundation/) a non-profit charitable organization that helps fund different aspects of INA's work, including scholarships, archaeology and fieldwork grants, INA's research vessel, and INA's research center in Bodrum, Turkey. Research there figured prominently in Bob's early career and continued beyond his retirement.
Peggy and Elizabeth wish to thank Bob's caregivers and Dwight P. Lanmon for his eloquent summary of Bob's career.
Arrangements have been entrusted to Carpenter's Funeral Home, 14 E. Pulteney St., Corning.
Kind words may be offered at: www.CarpentersFuneralHome.com