Milon Townsend has worked in glass his entire adult life, turning out everything from jewelry to beautiful figurines over the last 50 years, devoting part of his time to sharing his knowledge with others. His work has appeared in museums and galleries, and he’s made hundreds of appearances selling his wares or teaching his craft to others around the country, often accompanied by his wife.

During the 2020 Covid lockdowns, Townsend looked for a serious project to bring him some artistic joy and give the opportunity to brighten the dull gray days of that year for others. Consequently, he created 50 glass sculptures, one a week, all of them based on Aesop’s fables. He weekly posted photographs of this statuary on multiple online platforms to bring pleasure and hope to others. In return, as he wrote in his recently released book, “the feedback and growing audience nourished my artistic soul.”

“Aesop’s Fables – Illustrated in Glass” features over a hundred photographs of Townsend’s glasswork along with 50 of Aesop’s tales and their moral lessons, all taken from an old translation by George Flyer Townsend. Townsend found a copy of his namesake’s book in some boxes he unpacked early in the pandemic, and though he didn’t know whether the author was a distant relative, it was this book which galvanized his project.

And so, by beautifying the fables with his art, the glassmaker has spotlighted a literary classic whose stories and proverbs are just as fresh and pertinent to the 21st century as they were to an audience 2,700 years ago.

Parents, teachers, and other adults who read some of these fables aloud to children will notice, as I did when sharing some of these with a grandson, that the morals accompanying the fables still function as a map and compass for us today. Here, for example, is one of George Townsend’s renditions from the Greek:

The Pig, Sheep, and the Goat

A young Pig was shut up in a pen with a Goat and a Sheep. On one occasion when the shepherd laid hold of him, he grunted and squeaked and resisted violently.

The Sheep and the Goat complained of his distressing cries, saying, “He often handles us, and we do not cry out.”

To this the Pig replied, “Your handling and mine are very different things. He catches you only for your wool, or your milk, but he lays hold of me for my very life.”

It is easy to be brave when there is no danger.

Here is another that sums up much of what passes for political debate these days in our public square and on social media:

The Two Dogs and The Skunk

Two dogs were passing the time of day with a Skunk. One Dog said, “This is a beautiful black Skunk with white stripes.”

The second Dog replied, “No, my friend, this is clearly a white Skunk with black stripes.”

The first Dog objected, “It is black with white.”

The second contradicted him, “White, with black!”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Yes, it is!”

The argument quickly devolved into barking. The Skunk shook his head and turned, sprayed them, and left.

Arguing over opinion changes no one’s mind and leaves a bad smell.

The first edition of Aesop appeared in English in 1483 and eventually became a staple in the moral education of the young. Even today, many people understand when others allude to “a fox and grapes” take on disappointment or “an ant and the grasshopper” approach to a savings account.

Abraham Lincoln was a man who learned his Aesop and lived by the old Greek’s moral code. He knew his Bible and Shakespeare, but Aesop was his first literary love. Short of books in his impoverished youth, he repeatedly delved into the fables, memorizing many of them, making mention of them throughout his life in conversations and speeches. As a writer at the Daily Stoic puts it, Aesop “became a lens through which he came to understand human nature….”

We hear a good deal these days about using children’s literature – fairy and folk tales, nursery rhymes and poems, and stories of heroes – as a vehicle for teaching character to children. Whether we use Milon Townsend’s lovely version or some other collection, we should include in that mix the fables of the great-great-granddaddy of Western culture and morality.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Flickr-Boston Public Library, CC BY 2.0