The Blair Museum of Lithophanes was founded by Laurel Gotshall Blair (1909-1993), a native Toledoan whose father had opened the Blair Realty and Investment Company in 1908. Blair Realty was a major developer in Toledo in the 1920s, creating such communities as the upscale Heatherdowns with its own country club. Mr. Blair attended Scott High School and the University of Michigan, and like his father before him, served as President of the Toledo Board of Realtors.

 

A born collector, Laurel Blair, first discovered lithophanes in October 1961. He was attending a meeting of some collectors from the International Music Box Society in Berlin Heights, Ohio. There he saw something he’d never seen before -- two delicate porcelain pictures magically illuminated by the sunlight -- hanging in the window. He learned they were “lithophanes” and, as he later wrote, he “fell in love.”

 

 

 

 

Over the next several decades, Mr. Blair, truly a world traveler, amassed the largest collection of lithophanes in the world. In March, 1965, he opened a private museum in his home, displaying more than a third of his collection of over 2,300 lithophanes.

 

Prior to his death in 1993, Mr. Blair donated his collection to the City of Toledo. Dedicated volunteers worked diligently for nearly ten years, photographing and cataloguing the collection, and overseeing the renovation of a building located at the Toledo Botanical Garden. In July 2002, the new museum opened to the public in its transformed space.

 

In January 2004, Dr. Margaret Carney, the first museum curator since Laurel Blair, was hired. Working with the Advisory Board and City representatives, the museum curator has revised its membership program, expanded its public hours, offers special changing exhibitions annually, and authored the first book on the subject of lithophanes in 180 years.

 

Robert L. Huebner, 1921-2004

 

Gregory A. Knott, 1947-2010

 

Dennis Garvin

Posy Huebner

Claire Kirsner

Pat Scharf, Chair

Stacey Scharf

Chuck Williams

 

Georgia (GeeGee) Blair

Peggy Grant

Brad Huebner

Heide Klein

Bill Mies

Dennis Seffernick

Sandra Wiseley

 

Friends of the Blair Museum, Inc., incorporated in 2008, is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) that provides financial, operational, and artistic support for the Blair Museum of Lithophanes.

 

Barbara Brown

Posy Huebner

Mary Karazim

Marti Osnowitz

Pat Scharf, Chair

 

Dennis Garvin, City of Toledo

Margaret Carney, director and curator

Kurt Hanushek, installation specialist

Kara Smarsh, web site designer

Bill Walker, artistic designer