In the summer of 1976, a few months after Josef’s death, Anni asked Nick Weber to clean the garage. This was an easier task than it would have been with most garages, since the Alberses were intrinsically neat and orderly. Built as a two-car garage that was part of the ground floor of the house, it had most of one of the bays partitioned off with plywood as a locked storage room in which there were custom-built racks for Homages to the Square lined up like books on bookshelves. The long outside wall of the remaining bay, running between the basement of the house and the garage door, was lined with wooden orange crates which the Alberses had happily procured from the local grocery store. One day, Nick reached into one of the highest crates and a large upholstered envelope, clearly with something hard on it, fell against his chest. Nick investigated, and saw that, inside the envelope, there was a glass construction made of bottle fragments set in lead. Nick brought the object upstairs to show it to Anni who said, “Ah, that is one of the glass constructions Juppi was making at the time that I first met him. He was too poor to buy art supplies and would go to the town dump of Weimar with a rucksack on his back and an axe in his hand and chop up fragments of glass.” When Anni looked at the magical construction, which shimmered as light passed through it, her eyes filled with tears.
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