St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 47

'w Vf ir rr SECTION Nov. 23, 1985 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Jerry Berger i'zzzz ((Ik jk )) if Levi created this hand-blown vase shaped like a goblet. Prime Predictor Foresees A Drop PROGNOSTICATOR: "The prime rate will drop to approximately 9 percent by mid-January, particularly if we have a weak retail season." So says Andrew N. Baur, chairman of Southwest Bank, which has called 45 of the last 50 prime rate falls.

Baur made his prediction the other night at the annual multihousing awards banquet given by the St. Louis Apartment Association at Stan Musial Biggie's. Baur added that he foresaw an increase in the inflation rate by mid-1986. SH-H-H: We're predicting a pre-Thanksgiving frost in the Lambert Field offices of Transportation Director Col. Leonard Griggs.

State Rep. Neil Molloy, D-Normandy, will meet with Griggs Tuesday to discuss legislation he intends to propose in January on airport noise pollution. Accompanying Molloy will be a battery of legislative researchers and officials. II i (J Ml 7 III I '-'l y' VA iii m. This reticello platter by Sam Stang contains swirls of yellow glass.

St. Louisans strike a blow for excellence in hand-made glass Story by Patricia Degener Photos by Wayne Crosslin Of the Post-Dispatch Staff TUCKED AWAY jn the unprepossessing industrial area east of Kingshighway and north of U.S. Highway 40 is a small business unique to St. Louis and unusual anywhere. It is Ibex Studio, 61 1 Tower Grove Avenue.

Ibex, owned and operated by three young St. Louis craftsmen, specializes in the production of hand-blown glass objects. A glass studio is a fascinating place to spend time. Conversation takes place against the constant background roar of a furnace with a red-hot, Cyclopean eye. This "eye" allows the glob of melted glass to be withdrawn from the furnace on the end of a blow pipe and returned and reheated during the process of blowing and forming.

The large melting furnace, kept at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, runs 24 hours a day. "Every night we melt glass in a crucible in this furnace, so we'll be ready for the next day's work," said Dimitri Michaelides. one of the partners. "We may take the temperatures of the furnaces down over the course of a week, but glass is much more subject to thermal shock than ceramics. So the firing pace is far slower." Three annealing ovens they look like large ceramics kilns are lined up along one wall of the studio.

After the glass is blown into a finished form, it is placed in these ovens to "cure," or slowly cool down. If working in hot glass is faster than ceramics and provides instant gratification, it also requires speed and cooperation because of all its complicated and highly choreographed steps. Hence the partnership. The three partners Michaelides, Sam Slang and David Levi were all reared and educated in University City. They knew one another at University City High School but at the time were not particularly close.

Michaelides went off to Brown University in Providence, R.I., studied glassmaking at the Rhode Island School of De: 'gn, and went on to study at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. Levi worked in both ceramics and glass at Washington University and the Herron Art School in Indianapolis and spent a year working in Sweden with master glass blower Ann Warff, whose work is shown in St. Louis at the B.Z. Wagman Gallery. Stang majored in anthropology at Washington University and then studied glassmaking at Penland.

The three decided they wanted to make a career of doing what they love to do; the problem was how to make a living at it. "We all believed there had to be something between dime-store glass and the expensive one-of-a-kind art-glass object," Levi said. "Glass is popular, but there was no precedent here for large-scale production work in hand-blown glass. We're giving it a try. "We specialize in container production items.

They are not perfectly uniform, but that is their charm," he said. Production items are designated as being from Ibex Studio. Each of the partners also does one-of-a-kind works, which he signs. "Right now," Levi said, "our major production items are Christmas tree ornaments (lovely, large blown-glass balls) and drinking glasses. These are far more cost-efficient than large bowls, although we makes those, too.

The ornaments and glasses pay the bills. Glassmaking the equipment, the utility bills alone is not an unexpensive enterprise." (The ornaments range from $10 to $18; drinking glasses cost $14.) An exhibition of individual pieces made hv the three partners is on view through December at the Martin Schweig Gallery. 4658 Maryland Avenue. "We did a lot of experimenting for this show," Stang said. "We had a lot of breakage.

We're learning as we go. Actually, production work is a good discipline. David (Levi) picked up a let of technical knowlege in Sweden, but they are not as innovative in the field as this country is." "Scandinavia is still riding on its designs of the 1950s and '60s," Levi said. "Jobs are far more specialized in European factories. You need at least two.

preferably three people, during production, but we all 111 1 1 4 David Levi blows hot glass at the end of a pipe. Goblets and tazza were made by Dimitri Michaelides. WH WWHW.I. I It I Ill I 1.1, W. MEMORIES: Silent-screen siren Lillian Gish, 89, will be a no-show tomorrow at the 450th anniversary of the founding of the Ursuline Order of Sisters, which will be highlighted by a special jubilee Mass at the New Cathedral at 2 p.m.

After the Mass will be a reception and tour of St. Joseph's Croatian Church, 2112 South 12th Street. An Ursuline convent and school, which Gish attended, stood there from 1850-1925. Gish, who lives at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, had to decline the invitation, but reminisced about Ursuline in a letter to a another alumna, Sylvia Ray Friedman: "My darling mother had saved $125 and I was sent to the nuns at Ursuline for five months, which provided food and an education, and somehow, I know not, piano lessons. I fell in love with the Mother Superior and wanted to become a nun.

And as would happen. Sister Everista became my idol, but she, after seeing me in a couple of school plays, advised me that the theater would be better for me than the nunnery, and she never knew I had been on the stage at five before coming to Ursuline." ONWARD: William Daus, special assistant to City Comptroller Paul M. Berra, will clock out of City Hall on Friday to take a job with St. Louis University. He'll be director of special projects for the university's Health Line, a subsidiary that deals with health clinics, acquisitions and other medical matters.

Daus used to work at the old Christian Hospital and Central Medical Center and had been the in-house expert on hospital matters in the comptroller's office. Daus began work at City Hall in the 1970s under Berra's predecessor, the late Raymond Percich James F. Schmidt, director of pharmacy services at Lindell Hospital, has been elected prez of the Missouri Board of Pharmacy. DONT INVITEMS at the same bash: Harold Dielmann, chief of Sports Promo Partners and Dielmann-Wachter. and tennis promoter Jack Levitt.

The bottom line is that the twosome are breaking off their two-year contract, because of a spat over the significant financial losses of a recent tennis tournament CARDINALS ON CABLE: Drinks are on the house courtesy of Ed Musen, chief of SEM Communications Inc. ad shop, which landed the contract to tout the new St. Louis Cardinals Cable Network seasons for 1986, 1987 and 1988. The network will broadcast live 50 games from Busch Stadium over three systems so far: Cencom (21 municipalities); Group (including Webster Groves, Ballwin and Ellisville); and Storer (North County). SEM's initial campaign for the netork will hype a season package for $130 (including a $20 discount for those who subscribe by Jan.

31. and two seats to a Cardinals home game). UPDATE: As duly reported in Friday's column, an Anheuser-Busch spokesman has confirmed that a member of the Edgar Bronfman family indeed visited St Louis recently, as observers at Mid-coast Aviation Inc. tipped us. The particular Bronfman was in fact Charles whom the spokesman said was here "in the capacity as the owner of the Montreal Expos." FACES IN PLACES: Kim Spener has joined the Wallace-McNeil Co.

real estatery Joyce P. Pillsbury was honored at the Missouri Baptist Hospital annual meeting and dinner Thursday night at the Sheraton-Westport Hotel "for 30 years of commitment, dedicated service and continuing leadership for the hospital." He has served as chairman of the board of trustees since 1955; his father, Edwin S. Pills-bury, served In the same capacity for the hospital for 29 years. Kiel Opera House is where tm? 28th annual Ebony Fashion Fair will be held at 8 m. Dec.

7. This year's event will be billed "Body Language" and Is being run by Merdeaa Fielding and Fredda Wlth-trcpoea. It's sponsored by the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and the SI. Louis Federation of Block Units.

All proceeds will go to the Beatrice T. Hurt Scholarship Fund. For tickets, call 371-0040. PEOPLE, ETC Staffers of KMOX radio gathered at the Bogey Club Thursday to toast sales manager Robert Canepa. 60.

on his retirement from the station after 33 years. "I'll be able to play an extra game of golf." joshed Bob. It was also announced ttaf bis heir. Carls Canepa. will join the station as a rookie account exec interact, can take over any of the steps from starting, assisting to finishing.

We've developed a rhythm of making, even of selling together." The partners set up their own factory and built their furnaces. Their tools come from famous glassmaking centers in Sweden and from Murano in Italy. They work about 1 5 hours a day, every day. None of them is married. "We're totally overcommitted on our production items for Christmas," Stang said.

"I made a trip to the East Coast and about 15 galleries and stores were interested in our line, but we can't possibly supply them all. We have a gallery in the East Village and New York magazine is going to feature our work. We don't have an agent. So far, we've just done it ourselves. We are making a little money, but we put it all back into the studio, into maintaining equipment" The three are interested in the use of hand-blown glass in architecture, sculpture and lighting.

One of the more provocative pieces in their Schweig exhibition is a subtly striped, sculptural glass form that contains a light. Gallery (jours at Martin Schweig are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The Ibex Studio line is carried by the St.

Louis Contemporary Craft Gallery, 55 Maryland Plaza, and can also be seen at the Ibex Studio itself. An open-house sale will be held at the studio from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7.

The three partners at Ibex Studio, from left Sam Stang, David Levi and Dimitri Michaelides. Adrian Cornell We are the first to admit that we know absolutely nothing about Indian cooking. But that hasn't stopped us with any other types of cooking. For what reason do you think all those cookbooks and cooking magazines are on our shelves? If you can read, have a little time and are willing to experiment, heck, you can be a cook from any spot in Uie r0rld. So with an old Bon Appetit, Julie Sahni's "Gassic Indian Cooking," and Time-Life's "The Cooking of India" at our side, we set out to try an Indian dinner the other day.

The renter piece of the dinner was lamb with garlic and cumin. Here's how: Bone and butterfly a 5-pound leg of lamb. Create a marinade by mixing together the following: One minced onion, cup yogurt. 2 tablespoons lemon juice. 3 minced garlic cloves, a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger, a tablespoon cumin and 2 teaspoons of coarsely ground black pepper.

Pierce the lamb all over with a fork and then rub in the marinade. Get all sides of the roast. Place some plastic wrap over the meat and let It sit at room temperature for about hours. At mealtime, oil your broiling rak well and set it so the meat Is about 1 Inches from the broiler. The meat needs to cook only about 8 minutes on each side.

Baste with oil several times during cooking. The lamb was served with a cream-and-nut sauce, although It didnt really need any accompaniment. For the sauce, place 2 tablespoons each of unsalted cashews and blanched almonds in the food processor along with 1 cup milk and Vj teaspoon ground coriander. Process until a smooth puree results. While grinding the nuts, soak a couple of threads of saffron In a couple of teaspoons of hot water.

Melt a tablespoon of butter (if this were authentic Indian, you'd be using ghee) in a saucepan over moderate heat and stir In the puree mixture, along with cup light cream and a little salt Bring this to a boil while stirring away constantly. Add another VJ cup cream along with the dissolved saffron. Continue the stirring until the sauce is thickened enough to coal the whisk. Remove the pan from the burner. cover It with plastic wrap and Bllow the mixture to steep for 20 minutes.

The Indian name for this sauce is Sas. although uh all our substituting we will settle for cream-nd nut sauce. The best rice in the world Is probably Basmati rice grown la India. This cruncny. aromatic rice tastes like no other.

It, or something very like it. is now being cultivated in Texas and is available at health food stores. It's worth the trip. For our lamb dinner, we made the rice with crackling onion shreds. In a large skillet or saucepan, heat 4 tablespoons vegetable oil and add a large onion that has been thinly sliced.

Saute the onion until dark brown, about 15 minutes. Be sure to stir constantly near the end of the cooking to avoid burning. Remove the onion with a slotted spoon and drain on paper toweling. In the same skillet or pan. add a small onion, minced, and cook this for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add a bay leaf and cinnamon stick and cook another minute. Add 14 cups brown Basmati nee that has been well nnsed. Stir to coat with the oil. Season with salt Pour in 3 cups water. Bring to a boil.

Turn the heat to very low. cover the pan and cook for 45 minutes. Take it off the stove and let it sit for 5 minutes. Fluff the rice. Transfer to a heated platter.

Sprinkle with the fried onions and serve. We also made some unleavened Indian 3 read and a green salad with a curried urt dressing. But recipes will iave to come at a later date. Spice Of Far East In Indian Cooking EAT ETHNIC and save. The St Louis phone book is jam-packed with listings for ethnic restaurants, the bulk of them being either Italian or Chinese.

But the Greeks and the French are coming on fast. There are only a few listings for Indian restaurants, la a shame. Indian food we're talking Asian Indian here, not American Indian can be among the tastiest food in the world, especially if you like things with a little tang to them. Other cities have discovered Indian cooking. A recent trip to London found Indian restaurants around every corner, and our best meal there was in an Indian restaurant Jl 6k Jk lllii 1 iA 11.