[Image above] A picture of Fran Taylor within the Gay Fad Studios museum in Lancaster, Ohio. Credit: Lisa McDonald
Toledo may be The Glass City, but it is not the only town with a history of glass manufacturing in the state of Ohio. A serendipitous trip to Lancaster this past weekend introduced me to the fascinating story of a midcentury glass barware icon and the people aiming to revive her legacy.
My journey to discovery began when my friend invited me to Bottoms Up, a new three-day event marketed as the nation’s first celebration dedicated to midcentury glassware and barware culture. Considering our love of cool glassware here on CTT, I jumped at the chance to view some vintage glasses.
Arriving in Lancaster, the Ohio Glass Museum introduced us to the town’s century-long experience in the glass industry. Numerous glass companies established a presence in the area during the early 1900s, but glassware company Anchor Hocking became the leader among all the manufacturers by offering pink, blue, yellow, green, and ruby red dinnerware. They also played a major role in the production of Depression glass, a history we briefly covered on CTT this past March.
It was not at the museum, though, where I learned about the town’s barware icon. That discovery lay just down the road at the recently resurrected Gay Fad Studios.
Gay Fad Studios was a premier midcentury glassware company from 1939 until 1962. In 2022, entrepreneurs and partners Jason and David Annecy decided to revive the brand to honor and promote the trailblazing legacy of its original founder: artist and businesswoman Frances “Fran” Taylor.
Fran Taylor, the ‘Glassware Rebel’
Taylor was born in 1915 to Polish immigrants in Westmoreland, Pa. Her father worked in one of the local coal mines before relocating his family to Michigan, where he secured employment as a laborer in an auto plant.
In 1938, Taylor attended an art school in Detroit, Mich., and established a small dressmaking business. However, she soon became interested in painting and began decorating tin wastepaper baskets. Though she successfully sold these colorful baskets to local department stores, obtaining more tin became difficult when World War II began. So, she changed her medium to glass and officially founded Gay Fad Studios in 1939.
Taylor’s business involved sourcing “blanks,” or undecorated pieces of glassware, from various manufacturers, including Anchor Hocking. She then hand-painted her own brand of design motifs on the glassware and sold the pieces for a handsome profit.
As her business expanded, Taylor relocated from Michigan to Lancaster, Ohio, in 1945 to be closer to her suppliers. She also worked with an engineer to develop a new ceramic-based pigment and firing process to make her designs stick better to the glass.
These business decisions caused production to soar, and by the late 1950s, Gay Fad Studios was grossing $500,000 per year, equivalent to roughly $6.5 million today. But this success was also made possible by Taylor’s decision to “lift the voices” of other women artists in the community. Not only did she employ women to paint the glasses at Gay Fad Studios, but she also hired women such as Bill Butcher, the studio’s sole art director, to create the designs.
Unfortunately, in 1962, two inauspicious events led to the closure of Gay Fad Studios. First, Continental Can Co., a giant in the food-packing industry at the time, was on the cusp of a merger deal with Gay Fad Studios. Company representatives visited Taylor’s factory, and soon after, Continental Can Co. began producing designs that Taylor and her employees believed had been stolen from them.
On top of this event, employees of Gay Fad Studios were threatening to strike, as they had done previously in 1958. After multiple court battles, Taylor had a fire sale of her products, laid off her employees, and shuttered Gay Fad Studios in the summer of 1962.
Following the company’s demise, Taylor got into a car accident, which led to later health issues. She never worked again and died in California in 1996.
Taylor’s name and impact on midcentury barware culture faded into history, but all that changed in 2020 thanks to a seemingly innocent request for some murals in downtown Lancaster.
Revival of Gay Fad Studios
When Jason and David Annecy moved to Lancaster from Columbus in 2016, they visited the Ohio Glass Museum. During that visit, four specific pieces of glassware captured Jason’s attention.
“The only decorated glass they had in the whole museum was marked Gay Fad Studios, and the fact that it was decorated caught my eye, but I was also like, ‘That’s a peculiar name,’” he says in an interview with Ohio Magazine. “Years went by, and I never thought about it again.”
As the two men settled into their new community, they started volunteering with local nonprofits. In 2020, the local Rotary club asked Jason, who has a master’s degree in fine arts with a focus in design research from Kent State University, to create a concept for a new community mural to brighten the walls that line Center Alley in downtown Lancaster.
As he sifted through potential themes that reflected local history, Jason recalled the Gay Fad Studios glassware that he’d seen four years earlier. He and David decided to use those designs as inspiration for the mural, and they worked with local historian Joyce Harvey to ensure the patterns were true to the Gay Fad Studios originals.
The resulting two murals were a huge hit upon their completion in the summer of 2021. But the Annecys were not ready to let go of Gay Fad Studios, and they delved deeper into the company’s history. Based on this research, they decided on an ambitious plan to revive the business.
Jason and David contacted Stephanie Taylor, Taylor’s only daughter, and shared their plan to honor her mother’s legacy. After receiving her blessing, they secured the keys to a long-vacant downtown building next to Center Alley in April 2022.
The Annecys papered over the building’s doors and windows to keep their plans a secret. In July 2022, they opened the new Gay Fad Studios as a complete surprise to the public.
In an Ohio.org article, Jason acknowledges that it was a bold move for them to resurrect a company that leads with the word “gay” as a gay couple. But the Annecys believe the name, which they surmise was chosen by Taylor for meaning “joyous” or “happy,” fits perfectly today and has been “really great.”
In July 2023, Jason and David opened a small museum just off the main showroom, which serves as their testament to reignite the once-forgotten story of the hometown glassware pioneer. The museum houses just a few of the more than 4,000 original Gay Fad Studios pieces that the Annecys have acquired in just two years.
The Annecys organized the inaugural Bottoms Up event this past weekend to further spread awareness of Taylor’s legacy and raise awareness of Lancaster’s history as a major producer of midcentury glassware. They hope to see the event become an annual celebration each year.
“The joy and excitement and connection that there’s been with folks is in some ways just as fulfilling as the other work I’ve done before,” David says in the Ohio.org article. “We’re excited to find ourselves in a situation that we never could have planned for.”
Meet Jason and David Annecy in the video below, and learn more about Fran Taylor and the business’s revival in the “Further readings” sections.
Further readings about Fran Taylor
- “Fran Taylor brought art and talent to Gay Fad,” AntiqueWeek
- “Lancaster’s answer to Martha Stewart ~ A tribute to Fran Taylor, creator of Gay Fad,” Diary of a Rural Ohio Nomad
Further readings about the Gay Fad Studios revival
- “How one couple revived the legacy of a legendary Ohio glassware company,” Ohio Magazine
- “Shop Talk: Midcentury barware takes center stage at Lancaster shop, upcoming event,” Columbus Underground
- “Glass Acts,” Ohio.org
