In the summer of 1971, The Forgotten Works was started up on Telluride’s Main Street and was located where the Last Dollar Saloon is now operating. I rented the building from John Doremus, another Aspen investor in early day Telluride for $50. a month—and no triple net stuff.

The space was vacant and a bit junky inside. One of the front windows was broken out and a piece of plywood had been nailed on. There was a large wood burning stove near the front and a small office. About two-thirds of the space was partitioned off for an unused back room.

The name came from Richard Brautigan, author and poet, of a generation that will in all probability be forgotten some day.

THE WOODS LIVERY STABLE, NOW POST OFFICE

 

THE FORGOTTEN WORKS
By
Richard Brautigan

Nobody knows how old the Forgotten Works are, reaching as they do into distances that we cannot travel nor want to.

Nobody has been very far into the Forgotten Works, except that guy Charley said who wrote a book about them, and I wonder what his trouble was, to spend weeks in there.

The Forgotten Works just go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. You get the picture. It’s a big place, much bigger than we are.

Margaret and I went down there, holding hands for we were going steady, through the sun of a blue day and white luminous clouds drifting overhead.

We crossed over many rivers and walked by many things, and then we could see the sun reflecting off the roofs at inBoil’s bunch of leaky shacks which were at the entrance to the Forgotten Works.

The gate is right there. Beside the gate is the statue of a forgotten thing. There is a sign above the gate that says:

THIS IS THE ENTRANCE TO THE FORGOTTEN WORKS

BE CAREFUL

YOU MIGHT GET LOST

Robbie Melzer painted the sign that must be stored somewhere.

The Forgotten Works was a stained glass studio that was really designed to respond to Aspen’s love of stained glass and my need for a place to spread out and work. I had been doing stained glass work for some time, but it had always been in the basement or back room of where I lived. This would be the launch of a full blown studio with storage racks for my new and antique glass collection and a storefront to boot.

After acquiring a lease on the property for $50.00 a month, I went back to Kansas to get the balance of my supplies. While there, I hooked with an old friend, Ralph Parker, who agreed to move to Telluride and go into the stained glass business with me. Ralph took all of ten seconds to make this decision, but thirty-five years later he is still doing stained glass, although he moved to Salida years ago.

The deal in the 1970 was that stained glass was almost impossible to buy and no one would show anyone how to do it. It was a renaissance art and it was a secret. Well, because my step-father had an art glass collection and taught me how to do it, I had a big jump on the world of ‘wanna be’ stained glass artists. I, also, inherited a connection at Kokomo Glass Company in Kokomo, Indiana which was the last of the stained glass manufacturing outfits left going. So, although my supply was rationed, I could buy cases of stained glass.

Stained glass, is just beautiful. There is something about the sun shining through colored glass that both inspires and enchants us all. The history of the old cathedral windows of Europe with its secret potions and recipes provides wonder and respect. How did they do it? How long did it take? How did one get invited to join the stained glass guild? How many years apprenticeship before you were allowed to design or make a window?

Telluride seemed the perfect place to start.

Telluride had been forgotten and lost in time. Since its boom days of the 1880’s when more than 10,000 people lived in and around Telluride and there was true vibrancy and opportunity in the economy to its last days before the ski boom rebirth, Telluride had become a town with no bank, no newspaper, a company town with the mine not only being the largest employer, but the only employer besides government and the school. Idarado Mining Company, a subsidiary of Newmont Mining Corporation, was regularly running old school buses to the lowlands to fulfill it employee requirements. The buses arrived before we got up in the morning and left in the early afternoon. Standing on Main Street, we would stare at the buses filled with what was barely recognizable people with black faces from their work and wonder what the past was really like and what the future would hold for us and our new home, Telluride. There were certainly no jobs for “newcomers”. Entrepreneurship was the only way to get a foothold. In 1971, the most coveted non-mine job was school teacher, or county road employee. There were a handful of businesses, but it was, one liquor store, one grocery store, one hotel open in the summer, and one bar and café open. Telluride was a dead end at the end of the road that wasn’t even completely paved until 1969. The train had quit running thirty years ago. People took turns being Mayor, no one really wanted the job, because it included having to drive the snow plow and un-freeze people pipes as part of the job. Elvira Wunderlich who was the Town Clerk, ran the town and her sister, Irene Visintin, Idarado’s office manager, ran the mine was what was said around town. Everett Morrow, Telluride’s legendary Town Marshal, got to drive around sometimes in an old Ford Fairlane with bad seat covers and his only job was to keep the “hippies” out.

Ralph and I built matching work benches that doubled as counters to separate the work area from the display and retail shop area and we went to work. We started with a large back-order of work from Aspen. Mainly, stained glass lamps were in big demand. It seems that every restaurant in Aspen had old stained glass windows and what they now wanted was stained glass lamps.
We met every street hustler in Aspen in our first few months of business and I can still remember the restaurants and shops that bought, but didn’t pay for, our stained glass lamps, and hanging windows. We regularly drove back and forth to Aspen over McClure Pass when it was dirt from Paonia to almost Carbondale. We could get as many as twenty lamps in the back of Ralph’s VW bug by stacking them one on top of another and putting padding in between.

It was all about to change in Telluride with the announcement in February, 1972 that Zoline and his partners, Simonius-Vischer were going to launch the ski resort and build lifts and build the Telluride Lodge come summer.

There was going to be jobs, which was good, because the savings accounts were running low.

The Forgotten Works was merged with the Telluride Glass Company in 1972, which was another of my great brain storms. I was the only person in Telluride that could cut glass and people kept bring me old glass they had scavenged here and there to cut for them, so, I decided I might as well sell glass if I was going to cut it. I talked, Burk Thompson, who had been my roommate at the University of Kansas, into joining me in this endeavor since he was a pretty good carpenter.

In the summer of 1972, the building I was in was sold to Sterling Martin who had plans to put in apartments and Milt Moore came to town to do the work. Bob St.Onge and Michael Chandler would ultimately take over my space and put in a pizza place.

I moved up the street to what is now the Belmont Liquor Store building and after a few years moved the business to the old livery stable in Placerville which is now the Post Office.

I sold the stained glass business and window glass business in 1982 when Karen and I purchased the Telluride Times Newspaper.

I still do stained glass work from time to time. I love it and working quietly and patiently is very therapeutic. I have a collection which I have assembled by repurchasing windows from my art glass days which are stored away for children, grandchildren and beyond, but there are hundreds of windows and lamps out there, some in homes, but many in businesses. When we are in Aspen, we take a tour of restaurants to view our lamps and windows and remember the feelings. And, there is quite a bit around Telluride. The Sheridan Bar, the Belmont, and the Powder House Restaurant, to name a few.

Because, I always thought that it was unfair that no one would teach people how to do stained glass work, I taught lots of people. At last count there are more than ten stained glass studios operating around the country that were spawned by The Forgotten Works and the people that shared in the early years of Telluride’s rebirth.

I even taught a class in stained glass in 1974 at the Telluride Grade School. I believed that children needed to be encouraged to express themselves in the arts and be given some instruction, so, when I found out that the Telluride School didn’t have an art teacher, I volunteered.

The first class I taught, I loaded up enough stuff to take to the school. I think I started with First Grade. When I got there, there was a Sheriff’s Deputy in the room wearing his uniform, badge and carrying a gun. I first thought that the guy must be really interested, but soon I found out that he was there to watch me and make sure I didn’t do anything crazy. It was sort of funny, but meant to be intimidating. I just didn’t pay any attention and I had a lot of fun with the kids.

The next week’s class came and apparently I’d convinced the School Board that I was ok. Each class got to design and make a window hanging. Today, if you go to the grade school, a lot of the class rooms still have them hanging in their windows. It always makes me smile when I see them. I think of the kids and then the image of the over-weight Deputy Dog standing in the back of the room comes to mind and I really just laugh out loud.