In 1904, Edward Drummond Libbey wowed crowds at the St. Louis World’s Fair with a sprawling collection of his company’s shimmering cut glass, the centerpiece of which was a massive punch bowl set featuring matching cups and a sterling silver ladle.

Judges at the fair awarded the set, cut by a well-known craftsman in the Libbey Glass Co.’s Toledo factory, a gold medal.

After the exhibition, the bowl and cups were crated and shipped back to Toledo, where they went into storage until they were donated to the Toledo Museum of Art in 1946. They’ve been on display since, becoming fan favorites.

The ladle simply disappeared, and museum experts didn’t know it had even existed. But thanks to a sharp-eyed collector and a generous donor, the museum was able to purchase the ladle and reunite the set after 111 years apart.

Officials at the museum say being able to put pieces back together was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Libbey Inc., as the company is now known, continues to be headquartered in Toledo and has a glass plant in North Toledo.

“I couldn’t possibly be more excited about it. It’s beautiful,” museum archivist Julie McMaster said. “It’s such a great companion piece to an absolutely fabulous work of art.”

Exactly how the ladle became separated from the rest of the set isn’t clear, though museum officials believe it likely stayed in the hands of the St. Louis-based Mermod & Jaccard Jewelry Co., which fashioned the silver portion of the piece and played host to Libbey’s glass display in 1904.

At some point, the ladle ended up in a private collection. The Toledo Museum of Art became aware of its existence in 2006, when another glass collector called after learning of the heavy, ornately decorated sterling silver ladle with a unique cut-glass handle.

Shortly thereafter, a group from the American Cut Glass Association was entrusted with bringing the piece to Toledo to see whether the museum could authenticate it.

One of those who made the trip was Bill Evans, who serves as executive secretary of the collector group. Mr. Evans said the 1904 Libbey presentation piece is renowned.

“There isn’t anyone who collects cut glass and hasn’t heard of it. It’s just truly an amazing piece, and it’s amazing that it still exists,” he said.

Upon seeing the pieces side-by-side, matching the quality and the unique pattern cut into the glass, there was no doubt they belonged together. It took another eight years, but the ladle is now on display.

“To have it all brought back together, it’s just a wonderful accomplishment, and I’m so pleased it’s in a museum that’s going to take good care of it and it’s not going to get lost again,” Mr. Evans said. “It was hiding for 100 years, and now it’s back where it should be.”

To make these pieces, craftsmen would take a hand-blown leaded glass blank and use special cutting wheels to carve deep patterns into the surface of the glass. This process resulted in objects that would beautifully catch and reflect light. Doing that work on a bowl the size of the Libbey piece was quite a feat. In a 1946 newspaper article detailing the bowl’s donation to the museum, craftsman John Denman claimed he lost 30 pounds while cutting the piece.

“The scale involved in cutting it certainly is a large part of its aesthetic appeal. You need to have a highly trained, skilled glass cutter in order to create a pattern that is absolute perfection,” said Jutta Page, the museum’s senior curator of glass and decorative arts. “With cutting, you have only one shot at it. You cannot make mistakes.”

The museum has an extensive collection of cut glass, but Ms. Page said the 1904 punch bowl stands above the rest, for its design, its size, and its historic importance.

“As a curator you always like to have iconic pieces, especially here at the Toledo Museum of Art where we are collecting stellar works of extremely high skill level artistic ambition,” she said. “This fits into that.”

Though the bowl and ladle are works of art in their own right, they represent more than that.

Works of that caliber were few and far between. They demonstrated what Mr. Libbey’s company could do, helping him build a coast-to-coast brand out of Toledo that made him a wealthy man and helped fund the museum. 

Mr. Libbey’s aid enabled the fledgling museum to rent rooms downtown and later give land and capital to build the current museum. He also donated many works of art and established a $1 million endowment upon his death.

Experts say the exceptional works also show how well Mr. Libbey understood the value of public relations and the opportunity provided by exhibitions such as the World’s Fair. A decade before the St. Louis exposition, Libbey built a fully functional glass factory at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

“He used those as ways of making his grand pieces draw attention to his company,” Ms. McMaster said. “It was a fantastic marketing opportunity, and he would build on that and place advertisements in national newspapers.”

Even today, 90 years after Edward Drummond Libbey’s death, officials within Libbey Inc. marvel at their founder’s vision.

“It’s just amazing the things the guy had an insight on,” said Robert Zollweg, the company’s longtime creative director. “He looked at cut glass as the foundation of a good company, but his vision was much bigger than cut glass.”

For example, Libbey was the first firm to automatically produce electric light bulbs, thanks to an invention from Michael Owens. Though glass had to that point been hand blown, Mr. Libbey saw significant promise in new technologies that mechanized production.

The type of cut glass that Libbey helped to perfect and popularize fell out of favor following World War I and was nearly completely gone by World War II. By that time, less expensive, more utilitarian glassware had won over Americans. And while Libbey no longer makes cut glass, the company has looked to its archives to re-create the look of those products with modern manufacturing methods.

About 10 years ago, Mr. Zollweg based three new designs on 1907 drawings. They’ve proved popular, especially in Europe.

“That look is not going away,” he said. “It's interesting to see how that comes around, and it's exciting to see the fact that those old patterns are still so intriguing to people.”

Original cut glass remains popular with collectors, and Mr. Evans, with the American Cut Glass Association, said some of the best patterns ever made came out of Libbey’s design studio.

Just how much the punch bowl, ladle, and cups is worth is difficult to determine. Museum officials declined to put value on the set. The price of the ladle, which was purchased with funds donated by former Welltower Chief Executive George Chapman, wasn’t disclosed. Mr. Chapman declined an interview.

Mr. Zollweg recalled talking with a serious collector several years ago who suggested he might be willing to pay for construction of the Glass Pavilion in return for the bowl. That didn’t happen, and the Glass Pavilion cost $30 million, so the offer may have been less than serious.

Still, the Libbey set is unquestionably valuable, perhaps more so than anything that’s ever been offered before.

In 2014, a punch bowl set made by C. Dorflinger & Sons was sold at auction in Detroit for $132,000. Mr. Evans said the Libbey set, should it ever be made available, would almost certainly exceed that.

“It’s so much one of a kind and has such a wonderful provenance it would go very, very, very high,” he said. “People bidding on it would have to have very deep pockets, but to how much it’s worth I couldn’t say.”

The only time the bowl and ladle have ever been offered for sale was when they were new. According to an 1905 account of the exhibition, the bowl set was offered at $2,700. That would be more than $70,000 in today’s currency.

The ladle and bowl are on display in the Glass Pavilion, Gallery 3.

Contact Tyrel Linkhorn at tlinkhorn@theblade.com or 419-724-6134 or on Twitter @BladeAutoWriter.

First Published March 20, 2016, 4:00 a.m.