Lillian Glaser’s legacy is woven into St. Louis history

A catalyst for the formation of the Weavers’ Guild of Saint Louis (WGSL), Lillian Glaser and her resounding legacy are still tightly woven in the city’s history and the broader fiber arts community nearly 100 years after her death. 

Nine Glaser textiles strengthen the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection. 

Glaser was born in 1888 in Belleville, Illinois, and moved to St. Louis as a child. She enrolled as a student at Washington University in 1910, where she was an exemplary student. According to an article by the WGSL, during her first year, Glaser “took a standard repertoire of first-year art classes and received several honors marks in Drawing from the Antique, Sketching, and Watercolor Painting.”  

Glaser began teaching a weaving class as an officially appointed instructor at Washington University in 1919, eventually becoming a highly paid professor in the art school. An innovative and passionate instructor, she is credited for ushering in the revival of artistic weaving in St. Louis. In 1926, her students established the WGSL, making it the second-oldest group of its kind, according to the catalogue for Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration, a 2021 SLAM exhibition. Glaser served as secretary-treasurer of the Guild.  

Glaser frequently held weaving demonstrations around St. Louis, including at the Museum, then known as the City Art Museum of St. Louis. On December 2, 1930, the artist led a class at the Museum about work on the loom and textiles from different lands. An active member of the local community, she also taught young children the art of weaving and made costumes for local productions, according to archived issues of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1920 and 1929. Glaser was a featured artist in a Washington University exhibition at the City Art Museum that showcased art by faculty of the School of Fine Arts, according to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Works by Glaser in SLAM’s permanent collection have been on view in past exhibitions over several decades. Most recently, Thunder Bird Hanging, pictured above, was on view in the 2021 exhibition Art Along the Rivers, which showcased artwork produced and collected over 1,000 years in the region surrounding St. Louis. The textile, created to hang on a wall, featured vibrant patterns inspired by the landscapes of the American southwest. New York Harbor was featured in SLAM’s 2015 exhibition St. Louis Modern. Glaser wove this pictorial textile on a handloom, a slow and technically complex process. She intermingled symbols of modernity—ocean liners, airplanes, and skyscrapers—with old-fashioned sailboats and bridges in this stylized view of New York Harbor from 1928.  

In 1930, near the end of her life, Glaser travelled throughout Europe and studied Nordic and Swedish textiles. She died tragically of asphyxiation after an accident in her dye studio late one night in 1931. She was 43 years old. The WGSL continues to honor her legacy as they prepare to celebrate their upcoming 100th anniversary.