History of Glass in America?

[Dave Bross]

The Labino book:

http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/sub...lls&store=ZVAB

[Pete VanderLaan]

Bought it. Thanks Dave.

[Eben Horton]

Originally Posted by Tom Fuhrman

There are many wild stories of the early days. One of the best was when one individual played some bowling games with the artists glass collection at Penland and ultimately burnt down the studio.

i saw the video. Baaaaad Tom.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally Posted by Eben Horton

i saw the video. Baaaaad Tom.

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Spill it

[Tom Fuhrman]

Originally Posted by Eben Horton

i saw the video. Baaaaad Tom.

There was a video? I never heard that mentioned before.

[Kenny Pieper]

There are videos of those first GAS conferences. I had them copied to cds for the Penland archives, but never have heard of a video with bowling and the burning down of the old studio.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I had not heard that either Kenny and so it surprised me and I doubt it's veracity.
Now dressing in Drag was pretty common. I never quite understood that particular attraction. It was something that persisted in recent history when I was up there. Dale liked to go into second hand stores looking for really questionable taste items, particularly sunglasses. Henry used to talk about the drag parties that were held. I never saw one. I think once the image shift was going from "Truck Drivers of the art world" to a buff Billy Morris in a muscle t shirt, That sort of stuff was ditched.

[Eben Horton]

Originally Posted by Pete VanderLaan

********
Spill it

Out of respect for the individual who was 'banished' from Penland, i won't say who it was. I don't believe that he is doing glass any more, but still... If i did such a bone head move, I would want what happened to just fade into the past. Im not so sure it they were 'bowling' with the glass, but there was a lot of glass smashed and the house got a little trashed. This was one of the newer at the time houses built for teachers to use that was next to the hot shop.

[Tom Fuhrman]

the individual that told me about was the one who supposedly instigated and participated, but was not banished. That person was invited back even though they couldn't believe they were invited back. Alcohol was a big factor in that exploit.

[Dave Hilty]

Originally Posted by Pete VanderLaan

******
Also, since it's out of print, I don't see where copying it is stepping on anyone's toes.

Pete, I'm surprised at you. Since it's copywritten don't you think we should ask Henry's permission to copy before assuming its ok?

[Max Epstein]

Originally Posted by Zac Gorell

We had the opportunity to host the Glass Olympics in Sept. 2016 at Cleveland Institute of Art. We were honored to also have Henry Halem come and speak about the history of the studio movement in America. Here is the video for it....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkgF...ature=youtu.be.





.

This is great... thank you!

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally Posted by Dave Hilty

Pete, I'm surprised at you. Since it's copywritten don't you think we should ask Henry's permission to copy before assuming its ok?

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It's a quandry . Henry has expressed no interest in another printing. He refers to the book in the video on the history of glass saying virtually non one builds their own tooling, or batches anymore .When he approached me a few years back for an update, I told him that most of the suppliers had gone out of business making it hard to do it. I think he considered it as an E book but did not go that far.

As long as he still had copies for sale, I referred them to Henry when asked. We rarely speak. He does still have all the PDF's I presume. When I asked permission to print the stuff I put in there, he said it was my material and belonged to me.
It might be the case that if it sold for 200 dollars a copy, he would indeed reprint it. I don't see that happening either.
It's kind of an interesting concept since in the artworld, there has always been a move to compensate the artist if a sale is secondary. I would think a resale of a book might be considered that way, but then again, I haven't seen anyone pushing that kind of proposal lately.

[Bruce Cobb]

If a history of the studio glass movement is to be written, it should be written soon, while those remaining pioneers are still alive. My impression is that there was a lot of trial and error involved. No one really knew what they were doing. Those who did know, weren't talking. Or they weren't asked. In any case, small time operations hadn't ever existed before. Glass was an industrial product. Any artful output of hot glass had to come from industry. Just ask Tiffany. But the 60's were a time of upheaval. And some questioned why glass couldn't be part of the times. Why couldn't there be small-time operations of this mysterious material, glass? Well, there was the bravado of youth involved. "We can do anything, if we put our minds to it". That sort of thing. So the quest began. Things were primitive then. They had JM 425 marbles for melting. That's Johns-Mansville, for the un-initiated.
Cullet, right? It had problems. Ship-it, no one will notice. Oh, but they did notice. What to do? Blenko had their cullet. Great! Bring it on. But their cullet had problems too. From worn-out furnaces, no doubt. But nobody knew about that sort of thing then. So, people went back to industry. And that is why we became the "truck drivers of art". Because there is no getting around the fact that we are a marriage of art and industry. True, much of the industrial part has been out-sourced. You can buy almost anything now. But that implies investment, and with glass, great gobs of it. Back when I started my business, in '85, very little was available. So I built my own equipment. I didn't have much money then. I was young. So I learned how to arc-weld. I asked questions. Dudley Giberson, one of the pioneers, was a help. He said to "buy a big bag of rice". By that I knew that the road ahead would not be easy. Through trial-and-error, I prospered thru the 90's (after quitting a printing job in '85) and 2000's.
I have seen and been a part of the great glass revival. Most people don't realize what has been involved. Those who still produce glass art know. I've been working in the field for over 40 years. Does anyone still care? I don't know.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I think "Truck Drivers of the Art World" was because we smoked and drank a lot. Some were more sophisticated and took drugs.

[Bruce Cobb]

That's not it, and you know it.The self-deprecating aspect had to do with the fact that we we actually had to know how to do things. Or learn how to do them on our own. That took will-power, or chutzpah. Something in low supply nowadays.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I view 1985 as being very recent in our modern glass history. That's when you say you started up your shop. I go back quite a while longer and know that the big transition from the truck driver to the smooth sales group began with ousting Fritz Dreisbach from Pilchuck in 76 and replacing him with Billy Morris in a muscle T shirt. All that glass photographed on Plexiglass. Money is what changed it all and little else.

[Max Epstein]

On a more serious note... after reading Hot Glass Exchange it occurs to me that there is more than enough on CraftWEB to write a book.

Who is interested? I mean, there are enough people and info on here to pretty much write *the* book on glassblowing... am I wrong?

Glass formulas, techniques, history... it's all here. And stored precariously on an old platform. I'd like a hardcopy!

[Pete VanderLaan]

Katie has already granted me copyright to do the book. She holds copyright at this point. Right now we are mulling over passing Craftweb along to me formally and having my son take over being the server. He's already set up for it in Cambridge.
What it will take is a rather massive editing job on my part to separate the wheat from the Chaff over what is now 15 years. It has been interesting as I go back and see the businesses that were born and died in this time span. It's the same trick as with my book: Time. I'm still living an exhausting day from my point of view with the chores involved in having this dumb farm. Having Eric Trulson here is a great help and he has been effective in waking us up again. In turn for his energy, he is learning the chemistry from the day to day melts we do.
It would not be possible to reduce the entire thing to a book with over 100,000 entries but the value is clear. A week does not go by where I don't learn something from this forum and I've been at it 49 years now. It's more a question now as to whether to try to do a narrative or to simply reduce it to "where to get it" "Why it works", Why it won't work", I prefer the narrative and that was much of my intent in doing the book on color. Formulas aren't hard at all. Making formulas work is another matter. I think the same holds true for most of the shop practices as well.