Making it Work - Lauren Wingert

© Sneak Peek Glass LLC, Lauren Wingert 11/23/2014

Contents

Introduction - Do you want to try glassblowing?

CHAPTER 1 – Passion for Glass

CHAPTER 2 - Glass Blowing Lessons

Chapter 3 - The Waiting Game

Chapter 4 - The Art Gallery

Chapter 5 - The Gallery Hot Shop

Chapter 6 – Setting Up Glassblowing Equipment Stations

Pipe Warmer

Furnace

Marver

Glory Hole & Exhaust Hood

Pipe Cooler

Bench

Annealer

Safety

Chapter 7 - Blow For It!

Chapter 8 - I Am My Own Intern

Chapter 9 - Ten Thousand Hours

Chapter 10 - Something Better

Chapter 11 - An Art Gallery Only Sounds Fun

Chapter 12 - Going Home

Chapter 13 - The Opportunity

Chapter 14 - Version 2.0 Backyard Hot Shop

BACKYARD HOT SHOP PHOTOS

Chapter 15 - Working in the Backyard Hot Shop

Chapter 16 – Glass Cold Working

Chapter 17 – Monthly Cost of Glassblowing

Chapter 18 – What Do You Want to Make?  Or, What I Made and Why

Chapter 19 – Wingert Gallery of Glass

Chapter 20-  Decors and Finishes – Secret Tips and Techniques

Chapter 21 - Top Edge Treatments

Chapter 22 – Epic Failures ….Beginner Glassblowing Mistakes

Chapter 23 – Selling at Small Local Events

Chapter 24 – Selling at Regional Events

Chapter 25 – Booth Setup and Design

Chapter 26 - Marketing and Selling

Chapter 27 – Selling Online

Chapter 28 – Product Photography

Chapter 29 - What’s Next?

APPENDIX A – Start Up Costs

HOT SHOP BUILDING COSTS

GLASSBLOWING EQUIPMENT COSTS

APPENDIX B – Backyard Hot Shop Layout

APPENDIX C – Artist Resume

Introduction - Do you want to try glassblowing?

I took the plunge and built a private backyard glassblowing shop.    I mean, who does that?  It is the glass studio movement to the extreme.     

Glass blowing and playing with molten glass looks like fun.  Do you want to give it a try?  When I talk about what I do, many people tell me they would like to try it.  Are they serious?  Are you?  I became one of those people who wanted to give it a try.  And I wanted it bad.   I have no art degree, in fact, I am an accountant.    I wanted to try something different besides book work.  After all, I have been doing taxes since 1982.

Until recently, I had never heard of anyone else blowing glass in their backyard. I am sure there are others out there who have done it, but I have decided to write about it.   It’s been a fascinating experience.   This is a story of what I did and why.   The things I am sharing, I found out about the hard way.   I went into it totally not knowing what to expect or what was involved.   This is a discussion of the good and the bad.   I am sharing my encounters and will offer some advice.   The more information that becomes available to glass artists the better.  So, why not relate my know-how?   If you decide to make a hot shop you are responsible for the consequences.  You have to be as safe as you can be.   I am giving a lot of information about a backyard shop, but your choices and consequences are your own. 

I am not going to instruct you here on how to make a backyard shop or on how to blow glass.   There are other books that instruct about glassblowing and how to blow glass.  I will give you a lot of my tips and tricks and information about techniques.    My main focus though, will be on the lessons learned from becoming a selling glassblower. This is my journey from hobby glasswork to selling; and from accounting to art.   I will tell you about my backyard hot shop and what it takes to put one together and how it works.  

Glassblowing is not easy.   It is expensive and difficult and it is scary hot. It is challenging in many different ways, but it is also very rewarding. To see it through you must have the passion for glass.  I can say I have figured a lot of things out.   And I still have many challenges to overcome.  You may want to follow my path but have several questions about how to get there.   What is it like to set up a glass blowing shop?  What does it take?  How do you learn it?   Is it hard?  What is the cost to set up?  How much does it cost each month?  Do you burn yourself?  What about sales?  Can you make money? What else is involved?  

I hope I can help you with information and answers and by sharing my knowledge.   Maybe you will love it and to decide to go for it!   I am in my fifties with a home and expenses.   Attempting to get hired on as an apprentice or a glass assistant somewhere is not an option for me.   There was no way for me to go off and try to be a glass intern.   It seemed to me there were only two choices.   Forget blowing glass, or make a shop in my backyard.     

I chose to make the shop. 

CHAPTER 1 – Passion for Glass

A backyard hot shop is a big commitment.   Having the idea to blow glass and actually building a glass shop are miles apart.  To blow glass, there must be a facility of some sort.   A facility must be designed and built, and much equipment needs gathering. The glass hot shop must have the appropriate utility services.  Plus, you have to have available time.  Glassblowing involves shop time for the actual glassblowing.  Once pieces are created, more work is usually needed to finish them.  Finishing work is called cold working.  Cold working is grinding, polishing, and signing the glass.  Once pieces are fully completed, then more time is needed for the marketing and sales effort.   

I was a glass collector for seven or eight years before even getting the idea to try to blow glass.   What bridges the idea to blow glass to actually doing it and creating your own glass hot shop is your love and passion for glass!   

My fascination with glass began innocently enough, a long time ago.  I had a bit of spending money in my back pocket and I decided to pick out something from the local antique mall for my home.  I was not looking for anything in particular.  After browsing the mall for a while, I selected a fairly large orange and black vase.  Something about it was very appealing.  I was captivated.  This colors in the vase swirled about and the contrast was striking.   It was “calling to me.”   I discovered that I really liked colored glass and I began to look for more.

The hunt was on!   Flea markets and antique malls became my new favorite places.  Collecting glass was a super fun hobby for me.  I liked to walk my dogs at flea markets.   Sometimes I would go with one of my kids.  Collecting glass was an enjoyable weekend activity.   Los Angeles has a great network of giant flea markets.   A big flea market occurred every week.   And I mean really big.  It was flea market heaven in LA and I went to them all. 

The variety of glass available is astounding.  The colors, shapes, sizes, and textures draw me in.   I collected colorful glass pieces.   Over several years, I had collected over 300 pieces.   I loved how it filled my house with color.   I put up shelves and a display cabinet for the smaller pieces.

When my house was out of display space, I bought and sold in antique malls and had fun being a glass dealer.  

My passion for glass is deep.   I named some of my favorite glass pieces.   There’s a cased lime colored Italian glass piece called “Key Lime Pie”. The yellow bohemian piece with brown trails down the side is “Chocolate Sauce”   The first piece I bought I call “Monarch” for its resemblance to a monarch butterfly and it is the queen as it started my collection.                              

I don’t do much collecting any more due to the focus on my own glassmaking.   But my passion for collecting and dealing remains strong.  I still love treasure hunting.  I love to find a piece that is worth flipping on Ebay for a profit.    I will still buy a piece of glass if it is a “must have” for my house.  

Do you have passion for glass?   Yes, glassblowing in the studio is fun.  But the finishing cold working and the marketing and selling effort is not as much fun.  The actual glassblowing shop time is only a small part of the time needed.   If you are serious about your own glass studio, be sure your passion for glass is strong.  It will keep you going when difficulties are encountered.    

CHAPTER 2 - Glass Blowing Lessons

The bottom line is you need training.   You have to get your training someplace.   You have to be able to blow glass well enough to know all the steps and know what equipment you need, and why, and how it all works.   Don’t set up a shop until you have confidence that you can blow glass safely.   You should be able to blow glass at least at entry level before building a studio.  

My glass collecting led to curiosity to try to blow glass.   The idea became more serious over time.  I decided to check around and see about classes.

Glassblowing is more available in Seattle or Portland compared to where I am in Oregon.   In Los Angeles there also isn’t a lot of glassblowing going on, or at least it did not seem like it. Very expensive private lessons were available.   A few colleges in Southern California offered glassblowing such as Santa Monica College.     But I had to pass on taking the class.  How do you take a semester daytime course while you are working? How do you get started in glass blowing without classes or training?  Between expensive private lessons, or a class in a school setting, a class seemed to be the better option.  I didn’t do either because I was working full time.  I had to pass on enrolling in glassblowing class several times.   To make it more elusive, the school only offered the course in the fall term due to the heat in the summer being too hot for the glassblowing temperatures.

Then the news came that the company I was working for was being sold.  The fortune 500 company buying us didn’t need our small accounting department any more.  I decided to make a move to Oregon.  I found myself between jobs, but needing to stay in LA for a few months while waiting for my daughter to graduate from college.  I sold my home, rented a house, and began packing and preparing to move.  The timing worked out and I was finally able to take that glassblowing class!   I found myself with the time to do it at the right time of year.

I was never an art major.    It was scary to think maybe I was not artistic or coordinated enough for glassblowing.  As I mentioned before, I am an accountant.   Can an accountant blow glass?  The inside joke was move to north to Oregon or Seattle where a lot my family had moved to, and do taxes and glassblowing and open the “glass and tax” store.  It was a comical idea, yes?  I wondered what is it like to make glass pieces?  I was fairly mystified on how most pieces were made.   How did that flower shape get inside that paperweight?    I was so looking forward to glass class!

With 7 million people in the LA area, I assumed the glassblowing class would fill up fast.  I was right. My daughter was attending classes at Santa Monica College.   That was my ace in the hole.   Currently enrolled students received preference and were able to register sooner for classes.   New students like me had registration two weeks later than the returning students.    I devised a plan and pleaded with my daughter to register for the glassblowing class.   She agreed.   I checked online when registration opened up – half full on the first day.   The class was full and registration was closed on the very next day.   She got in. Given that the class was full in two days, there would have been little opportunity for a new student to get in.   The currently enrolled students had scooped up all the open slots.   

To get into the class I tried a switch, and it worked.    After the registration became open for new students my daughter went online and put in a ‘drop class’ request.   A few moments later I put in an enrollment request.   Bingo!  The computer system made the swap and I was in!   I was very happy because the class cost only about $100 in lab fees for a semester of glass blowing where private lessons could be $100 or more just for a weekend class.   It was off to glass class for me!!   Glass blowing lessons were very exciting for a glass fanatic like me!

On the first day of class, there were ten or twelve extra people hoping to get in. They were hoping for a possible drop.  The extras showed up for a few classes but soon went away when it became clear no one was going to drop.   I was smiling that I had made it in!

The instructor gave an overview and an outline of how the class would go.  Each week we had two classroom sessions, and then we needed to add a couple of two hour lab sessions per week.   The scramble for lab time slots was on!  Try getting thirty folks in a class to co-ordinate lab schedules.  The hands-on with hot glass in the labs was what we all wanted.    It was a bit of a shock also to realize that my two days per week glass class suddenly turned into four days per week because of the labs.   The worst part was the parking structure.  Parking was overcommitted and it felt like a dog fight.    The extra days and the difficult parking was a chore, but I was willing to work it out.

Class initially got off to a slow start.   We probably did four or five classroom sessions alone just talking about glass.     It took that long to get the lab timeslots squared away.  Honestly, I don’t remember much of what they discussed in those first classes.   That was seven or eight years ago.  I remember it was kind of interesting, and I remember wondering when the actual hands on glass lessons would begin.   Then came the word, labs would start the next week!   Finally, learning to work in hot glass was here!

That week the hot shop became the classroom as they explained all the equipment in the shop.  They covered safety and showed us some basic moves. We made a line as each student got a blob of glass on a punty rod and rolled it a bit on the metal table to get the feel of it.   We learned how to open and close the furnace.  We made another line as each student got to sit at the glass bench and use jacks on molten glass for the first time.  It was fun.   Because of the number of students, the working time was a small fraction of the class time and most of the time you were watching and waiting your turn.  That part was not so fun.  There was a lot of waiting time in the class.     

In one classroom session it was demonstrated how to take a gather of glass and blow a starter bubble.   It was explained to us and we were shown the motions.    We were to practice in the hot glass during our labs.   We would break off our bubbles after blowing them.   After they were annealed overnight you could keep them.  Most of the practice bubbles were recycled back to the glass furnace.   I still have my first bubble I kept from glass class.   

In the first few lab sessions we practiced taking a furnace gather, shaping it a bit, and blowing the starter bubble.  We would create the bubble, and knock it off the blowpipe.  Blow a bubble, and knock it off. We practiced this for a couple of weeks.   Repeat the steps over and over. I was a little annoyed at this because I felt that I had it down and I wanted to know the next steps.  While you were practicing bubbles, the returning students were playing and having a great time making vases and yard art and doing cool stuff.   I felt a bit abandoned, clueless, and uncoordinated.  The instructor was rarely in the glass hot shop.   The teacher’s assistants would determine when the next steps would be taught only after they felt the group was ready for them.   It was very frustrating, as I wanted to learn the next steps sooner than the classroom environment allowed.   

There were three glory holes, three workbenches, and three marver tables in the school hot shop.   It was set up with three workstations overall.   There was a lot going on in the labs. If you had trouble during the lab time with whatever you were doing, you would get tips and advice from the teacher’s assistants and the returning students.   As I mentioned before, the instructor was rarely in the hot shop labs. 

The second semester students and the TA’s were very helpful.    But they were only helping intermittently.   They were more interested in working on their own glass.  It was a slow learning process because it lacked consistent one-on-one attention.   They did watch you long enough so they were confident you could do the “move” that you were learning that day.   There were hundreds of little moves to learn.   It was quite a sink or swim experience.  There was no one that really cared about your progress to come to the rescue if you were sinking.

It became very clear to me from the class that private lessons would have allowed for learning at a faster pace.    The bigger advantage to the class was the four hours per week of lab time.  The plentiful lab time allowed for you to practice the motions until you had them down.     In the long run the practice that I received in the school setting made up for the frustration at the slow pace of learning.   Practicing the steps and repeating the motions is the best way to learn it well.      

At times the commotion in the glass labs was comical.  “NO DON’T do that !!!!”  The TA’s would yell.    “DO IT THIS WAY…”  “Open and close that lear faster!!” “You guys are doing ok but you have to move FASTER !!!”   “You are working too COLD !!”  Some students only blew giant bubbles the whole semester.     There was one man who slung molten glass around every time his blowpipe went in and out of the furnace.   His crude technique was scary!   There were people in the class who kept failing at some of the steps.   Some of the students just could not get it.   Sadly, those students did only paperweights for the whole semester.   They could not complete the punty step and they didn’t receive any extra instruction to help them learn it.

Eventually the next steps were demonstrated.   We were taught how to put in a jack line, make the punty, and transfer a piece.   The transfer is important because you have to transfer that bubble to a punty rod to then be able to open the top of that bubble up to become a vase. We worked mostly with clear glass and began to add color only later in the semester.  The class felt like a very frustrating chore.    Something I wanted intently was progressing so slowly.   It was not easy to learn this way.  They basically threw us into the hot shop and said “ok go to it” without providing very much one on one attention.   The class was not as effective as it could have been.   When I was doing something wrong, I tended to repeat the same mistake until someone came along to explain how to do that step correctly.  

One of the classroom days each week became demonstration day, where guest glassblowers would come and demonstrate making something.  Those were valuable sessions to watch experienced people work.  I wished I could do it like the guest glassblowers.  They made it look so easy!   But I was feeling frustrated and having a hard time.

“Dear God”, I prayed one night, “help me do better in this class.”   I really wanted to learn it.  “I am struggling and it seems so hard.”  A little voice popped into my head….”you are going to be a great glassblower” is what I heard.  Hmmm.  I can barely do any of it, so how is that possible? I thought I must be hearing things.  I must be ‘nutso’ I thought.

Through the weeks of glass class my frustration lessened.   Maybe there was a method to their instruction.   Little by little I learned.   By the end of the class it did start to click.   I could make little glass things.   Some of the students made ugly glass ‘blobs’.  Mine were beginner pieces, but I could do it and they did not look like blobs.  I became excited and felt inspired. I learned the basic steps.  Toward the end of the class, just when things started to click… the semester ended!!  

Overall the class gave me hope to be able to blow glass on my own.    Maybe glassblowing for fun (and hopefully profit?) could be for me?  On the last day of class, I brought in my digital camera and I took pictures of all the equipment at each station.   (Yes, that was before the I-Phone).   I took the photos so I would have a record of all the equipment that would be needed for glassblowing if I wanted to try it someday.  

In the class if you could make a goblet, you got an automatic A grade.   I could not do one.   None of the beginning students could make one.   My pieces did look like something.   They were not blobs at least, so I still received an “A”.     And I discovered I was newly inspired.   Also the class taught solo glassblowing.  It was valuable to learn the extra steps needed to be able to perform glassblowing solo, without any assistants. 

As the semester ended the instructor announced he would sign drop forms so you could drop the class, and then you could take it over again.  What?  I had never heard of dropping a class after it was completed.   But that is what was going on.  There was this club of ‘regulars’ that had taken the class three, four, or five or more times!!  The instructor had essentially created a little hobby club, and was effectively blocking the potential new students out!!   It was rather appalling.  It was great for the returning students, but not good for anyone else.   The instructor appeared to be taking the easy way out.   There isn’t much instructing to do when most of the returning students already know the routine.      

Overall the glassblowing class at Santa Monica College would be a great class if I could have taken it again as a returning ‘club’ student.   I did get a lot of hot shop lab time and their methods did work.   I learned the basics, though it was not a very good class for a beginner.   Not great, but it was necessary.  Glass blowing training is necessary.

Chapter 3 - The Waiting Game 

Glass class was over, and I moved.  The house I bought in Oregon could not accommodate a hot shop in the backyard as it was on a hill.    Access to the backyard was limited.   To get to the back yard you had to go through the house or all the way around the outside.  There was no easy way of fixing that.

I bought the house because I liked it.  I didn’t buy it with glassblowing in mind.     If I had to do it over again of course I would have bought a house to begin with that had a yard suitable for a glass shop.   Live and learn.   

I was now in waiting mode.   How could I get started glassblowing?  I felt inspired after my class, and I was on a mission to blow glass.  Glassblowing would not work at my house.    So I decided to find a commercial building to do glassblowing in.  Trust me when I say this was a bad idea.    I will address that later on, but suffice it to day at the time it seemed like a fine idea.

I met up with a local realtor and we spent the next eighteen months looking at commercial locations.       This was like looking for a needle in a haystack.    I wanted something with a working shop area in back.    Perhaps maybe it could also have a sales floor.   With a sales floor I could sell my glass and also use it as an office to meet tax clients.  Glass and tax in real life!    I had simple needs really.  But the buildings I looked at were not lining up with what I wanted.    

I wanted something as cheap as possible, as I knew the glassblowing would be expensive.   I wanted to keep any shop rent or mortgage payment to a minimum.    The goal was a building for less than $100,000.   Every time one came on the market, I went with my realtor to look at it.    The problem was that most of these lower price places were very beat up.   The lower priced buildings seemed to need as much work in deferred repairs as they cost.  Or the locations were just terrible.   Or the building would have some bizarre layout.  It seemed every look at an affordable building was a waste of time. It was a lot of waiting and looking.    I could afford a building payment or rent.   I wanted to do glassblowing, so I kept on looking.   

While I was waiting for a facility, I bought a 14 inch kiln from AIM Kilns that was 120V to experiment with glass fusing. I plugged it into the 20 amp freezer plug in the garage as it was the best wiring in the house.   Fusing glass is the simplest form of glass working and it is also the most popular.  To do fusing, you can get by with one kiln, tools, molds and glass.  It is less expensive to do fusing over blowing.   I also tried some glass castings in my small kiln.  

I recommend fusing lessons and as much education on glass fusing as you can get. You can do a lot with glass fusing, and it is limited only by your imagination. It is very valuable to begin to learn as much as possible about glass before trying glassblowing.   Fusing is a great glass art if you cannot do blowing.   If you plan things right, the glass from fusing can later be used in glassblowing as color or design elements.  The glass cutter and small hand tools (nippers/runners) I bought for fusing I use all the time.  I still use my small first kiln that I purchased.    I predominantly do fusing in the summer when it is too hot to blow.  Fusing is fun stuff!   But I wasn’t completely happy with fusing.  I wanted to do glassblowing.

Chapter 4 - The Art Gallery 

I moved to the Corvallis area.   I visited Oregon looking at four year colleges, and we took a look at Oregon State University.   My daughter never did attend OSU, but I liked the area.   I also liked the idea of the stability of a college town.   I bought a house in Philomath, which is just outside the Corvallis city limits.   

I found a commercial building with a 1200 square foot sales floor.  It had two back rooms that were each over 200 square feet in size.  And it was in downtown Philomath, only a few minutes from my house.   The back room looked like it would be just big enough for glassblowing.  It measured 15 feet by 15 feet.    The building was not as beat up as others I had seen. My senses took leave of me and I bought the building.   

Philomath is on Highway 20 to the Oregon Coast.  There were thousands of cars passing by each day, so the automobile traffic looked appealing for the location. And it was also a nice building.  

Clearly I was not a glass artist yet, and my relocated tax business was pretty small, so I decided to operate an art gallery out front on the sales floor, and do glassblowing in the back.  I advertised for artists and filled up the gallery with art from other artists on consignment. The plan was if I eventually improved at glassblowing, to convert the art gallery to my own glass showroom.   For the near future though, glassblowing had to be a hobby while I practiced at it. I also had another job besides tax preparation and running an art gallery.  I sold cosmetics on ebay.   I was able to pull and ship orders while waiting for gallery customers.    I could do taxes and meet people at tax time. And I could now set up a glassblowing studio in the back. 

Somehow I had created four part time jobs for myself: income taxes, cosmetics sales, art gallery, and glassblowing.   It took a lot of time juggling, but it all seemed to fit together in a strange kind of way.    

      Art Gallery Sales Floor

Chapter 5 - The Gallery Hot Shop

It was time to get busy.  I had many things to do confronting me all at the same time.

The first order of business was building repairs.   The building needed paint inside and out, foundation work, a new sump pump, new flooring, and decorating.   The hot shop back room needed electrical outlets put in, and a gas line.     The front sales floor had to be made gallery worthy.   I had to come up with pedestals and fixtures for the sales floor.   The amount of work was definitely more than I had hoped for.   I tried to do as much of the work as I could myself.  

I started on the front of the building so I could begin to use the building.  The back room for the hot shop could wait.    While fixing up the building I made an equipment list from the glass class photos.    I sourced every item online as best I could to try to determine what to buy and where I could get the best price.   I put together a budget for the equipment from the list I was developing.    The glassblowing equipment available ranged from very large expensive professional equipment, to inexpensive undersized hobby equipment.    I purchased equipment in the beginner and intermediate range.  My reasoning was if I became really good at glassblowing, the equipment could always be upgraded at a later date.     It is better if you don’t ever have to change your equipment plan.  This is because the equipment you choose will affect the setup that you need.      A bigger glass furnace might need a more powerful electrical system for example.  

Ultimately I set up my hot shop twice.   The first time was at the art gallery.   A few years later I moved the hot shop to my backyard.  I learned so much from my first hot shop at the gallery.     

As mentioned, the room in the back of the art gallery was 15 feet by 15 feet.   I laid out my glassblowing floor plan as to how the equipment would sit.  The room was just large enough.   After the floor plan, the other factors to consider for the hot shop were power and energy sources, water source, fire protection, and ventilation.  

There was already a small electrical panel in the back room that was not in use.   It had a 60 amp power line running to it.     60 Amps was just enough.   My crucible furnace is 35 Amps and the annealing kiln is 25 Amps.    The only reason the power was adequate was because the kilns cycled on and off and were rarely on full power in unison.    I blew glass there for about three years and the circuit breaker never tripped off. My electrician put in breakers and ran conduit on the exterior of the walls from the panel.  The room just needed simple outlet additions.  Although it was not very complex, the electrical work was the largest expense in preparing the hot shop for glassblowing.

I needed natural gas for the pipe warmer. A local plumber put in a gas line extension to the back room.   I had to get a plumbing permit, because it was a gas company requirement.     Except for the gas line permit, I never contacted any regulatory folks.   I didn’t call the fire marshal for an inspection.  The electrical was just lines and outlets added to an existing panel.  Our city had no business license program.   They had no idea what any one in town was doing.   And I liked it that way.    I didn’t want someone telling me I couldn’t do glassblowing.    I didn’t want to add thousands of dollars for a fire suppression system or a fire break wall if someone thought I should have one.   I figured go forward and ask forgiveness later if needed.  I can’t recommend doing the same.   It’s on your head if you choose to be irresponsible and burn down a building.

Wooden glassblowing tools need to be waterlogged, and water is used in some glassblowing steps.  The back workroom of the gallery already had a sink for a water source.    Water was already available in the hot shop space.     That was something I didn’t have to do or fix.

Fire hazard is the biggest danger with a hot shop.   I covered the entire floor with ½ inch cement backer board panels.   It’s the material normally used as a sub-wall behind ceramic tiles.   The cement board is fireproof.   If you were to drop a hot blob of glass on the floor it will not catch fire.       I also lined the wall behind the glory hole with the cement board.      It was a very good alternative to installing an expensive cement slab floor.   I worried some about fire, but I was happy with the fireproof/ fire resistant floor.

There was no manual or instruction book to help me get all of this done.  I had to find my way on my own.   If you do glassblowing, safety should be your biggest concern.  Stuff happens.  Even Lundberg Studios building burnt down, and they are longtime professionals making exquisite glass.   Do whatever you can to be safe.

The room I had chosen to become my hot shop was very enclosed.    The back work room only had one window and one door.    With all the heat created by the glass equipment the room had to be vented.   The crucible kiln and the glory hole both operate at 2000 degrees or higher.   I knew good venting would be needed to stay safe and prevent the room from quickly overheating.  My vent choices were up through the ceiling, or vent sideways out the window.   With the expense of the building mortgage, the fix-up and repair costs, and the pending glass equipment purchases, I was motivated to choose the least expensive route.  I decided to vent out of the window.    I also installed a screen door that could be opened during glassblowing sessions.

The ventilation was one of the trickier aspects of setting up the glass shop.   It involved creating an overhead hood, sourcing a commercial belt driven exhaust fan and ducting, installing an attic fan, installing a screen door, installing wall fans, and using multiple floor fans for air flow.    It took a while to round up all of the parts and pieces and get everything put in and working. 

While setting up the hot shop, it became clear that I was my own “MacGyver.”   I became the lady with the toolbox.  I got to know the guys at home depot on a first name basis.  “What are you working on today?” they would ask.   I could not afford a handyman to put everything together.   That would have cost a fortune.  I could do this stuff.  I just wasn’t very fast at it.  I had to problem-solve any obstacles and come up with creative ways to make everything work.   I created a homemade commercial style exhaust hood from two residential kitchen exhaust hoods bolted together.    I hung them about 16 inches away from each wall in the corner by the window.   I used sheet metal ducting to make a connecting skirt between the hood and the wall.   Eight inch ducting came up out of the hood and ran across to the window.   

Mounted in the window sat my belt driven commercial exhaust fan. I added louvers to the exterior of the window to keep out the rain. The window in the back room was already missing; I only had to seal around the fan unit with ducting sheet metal.    A belt driven fan is important because it won’t fail due to high heat.  The high temperatures inside the ventilation ducting will burn out direct drive mounted fans.  In-line exhaust fans are out of the question.   With the belt driven fan, the fan motor sits outside the path of the heated air, and won’t burn out.    It was a big ‘score’ to find a belt driven exhaust fan at the local Habitat for Humanity thrift store. 

To finish off the window area I installed an attic fan next to the belt driven fan to help exhaust ambient hot air.  The attic fan automatically came on when the temperature exceeded 85 degrees.    The thermostat on the attic fan was very helpful as it came on when needed during glassblowing.    It would run and stay on when it needed to and it would turn itself off long after a blowing session when the room cooled down.

I installed a secondary exhaust system.    I made holes in the wall and mounted several in-line duct fans into the wall on the opposite side of the window to help remove even more hot air.     I also used a couple of pole floor fans to create a stream of air flow.   The pole fans were directed through the room and out the screen door.   

The building escrow closed in April.   The repairs and gallery fix up took three months.    The hot shop setup was completed in another three months.   It was a big project with a purpose.  The room was now prepped for glassblowing.   It was time to add the equipment!

The Gallery Hot Shop

Chapter 6 – Setting Up Glassblowing Equipment Stations

The next order of order of business after your facility set up is equipment choices. How big do you want to be able to blow?  Bigger glass pieces require bigger equipment.    Bigger equipment can cost much more and require a bigger startup budget.    Most glory holes run on gas.  Crucible furnaces are either gas or electric.  Annealing Kilns are typically electric. The equipment that you choose directly affects how your facility is set up.   If you want a really big glass furnace that holds 200 pounds of glass, you might need to install a 200 amp electrical service.   For my setup at the gallery 100 amp service would have been perfect.   The size of the glory hole will greatly impact or limit the size of pieces that you can create.   Be careful on your choices.  Smaller setups have lesser needs.  Larger setups are more involved. 

If you want to go really small, there is what is called a Murphy’s Fire Bucket, which is a glory hole only about a foot long.  You could get a small crucible furnace and work small on a hobby basis in a garage.  I knew I did not want to go that small.   But I was not ready to go “professional” either.    The cost of glass equipment will make you grow faint in heart and want to give up.   This is the main reason why glassblowers are scarce.     It is a costly undertaking, even if you want to start small.  Online research led me to professional glass furnaces that were $10,000 to $50,000 just for the furnace alone!   I saw glory holes costing $5,000 to $6,000.    Annealing kilns were not as bad, but high end versions were still several thousand dollars.   You could easily spend $100,000 to set up a glass shop.   The total I spent for all of my equipment was much less than a single professional furnace!    It helped to have a big hand from my Dad who fabricated some of the items. Thank you Dad!

It helped me to organize my giant “glassblowing things to buy” list by thinking of everything needed by station.  My station detail list and the prices I paid are in appendix A.   The “glass stations”are:

1-Pipe Warmer

2-Furnace

3-Marver

4-Glory Hole

5-Pipe Cooler

6-Bench

7-Annealer

Pipe Warmer

The pipe warmer station consists of a pipe warmer, blowpipes, and punty rods.

In order for molten glass to stick to the blowpipe or to a punty rod, the pipes and rods need to be pretty hot.   Ideally, they should have a dull red glow.   At the gallery my pipe warmer was created from a fireplace insert I found at Habitat for Humanity Thrift store.  From this piece I made my own gas fired pipe warmer with duct metal sheeting, kiln fire bricks, straps, bolts, a gas control valve and gas line connectors.   Oven racks zip tied together both supported the pipe warmer oven and held the blowpipes while the warmer was in use. 

Creating my own pipe warmer cost me about $350, but this was far less expensive than anything I could find to purchase.  I ordered kiln bricks and wrapped them in ducting sheeting.  The kiln bricks were about $200, the largest part of the cost.  Later, in my backyard hot shop, I switched the warmer from natural gas to propane.   To make the switch I tossed out the fireplace burner and replaced it with a barbeque burner.   I made my own pipe warmer and saved some money on that piece of equipment.  It is very expensive, and takes a lot of resources and commitment to set up for glassblowing.   I looked for every way that I could to keep the startup costs down.

Furnace

The furnace station consists of the glass furnace, and a pipe stand

The furnace is the where the glass is kept in a molten state.  Inside the furnace is a crucible.   The crucible could be described as a heavy duty ceramic crock pot that holds the molten glass.   The furnace kiln keeps the glass molten 24 hours a day. My crucible kiln will hold 80 pounds of glass. Next to the furnace is a pipe stand.  It is a stand with rollers on top.   The stand allows you to gather glass, rest your hot blowpipe on it with one hand, and close the furnace with the other hand.    I bought a 220v crucible kiln from AIM Kilns.  They make kilns for glassblowing and they were located right in town in Corvallis.  The crucible was not included and cost extra.

The pipe stand was from Home Depot.   I converted a plywood support stand designed for use with a table saw to support sheets of wood.    It had a large cylinder roller for feeding wood into a table saw.  I removed the big cylinder roller. I had to find ball bearing rollers that would work to support a blowpipe instead, and parts to connect the rollers to the stand.  I found a few commercially made glassblowing pipe roller stands online for several hundred dollars.   I made mine for about $40 each.  If you have the ability to be creative and are able to fabricate some of your own equipment, you can set up glassblowing for far less money. 

The tiny handle on the crucible kiln lid was not practical.  The kiln lid gets very hot.   I could tell just by looking at it the short little attached metal handle would be too hot to touch.   The working temperature of the kiln is over 2000 degrees.  Maybe an assistant wearing a glove could operate the lid, but I had no assistant.  I took barbeque tongs with wooden grips on the handle and bent the metal tong tips around the kiln lid handle and secured the end of the tongs into place with an automotive hose clamp.  This gave added length and leverage to the little kiln handle.  The modified kiln handle is now always cool to the touch.   The kiln has a heavy brick lid. I used cable, pulleys, and a paint bucket filled with sand to counterbalance the lid.    With the counterbalance, the lid can easily be opened and closed with one hand.  

Marver             

The marver station has a metal marver table, frit bowls, a hot plate, optic molds, ceramic tiles, and ornament holders.

The marver table is a stainless steel table where glass is rolled and shaped using the table top and table edges. The marver table is one of the main tools used to shape the glass as it is being worked.   You can also be ‘old school’ and use marble.    I showed photos to my Dad.  He is an engineer and all-around handyman.     For a token $500 fee (mostly for materials – thanks again Dad!) he made my marver table and my glassblowing bench.    That was a big boost and saved me some more money!   I had seen online glassblowing benches and marver tables priced at over $1500 each.     My Dad used stainless steel on top that was a bit too thin.   The extreme heat of the molten glass has actually curled the edge of the marver table upward.   The fun thing is the curled edge turned out to be very useful in shaping the glass starter bubble!  Happy accidents are the best.

This station has glass frit pickup bowls for crushed glass.  Colored crushed glass called frit is placed in the bowls.   The frit will stick to the molten glass bubble to color your glass piece.   I bought a couple of frit bowls.   I also use stainless steels bowls on a wooden rack that I made.    And I made a few frit bowls copying the design of the purchased ones.

The hot plate is used when I want to add small glass chunks or kiln formed pieces in a blown piece.    Small pieces of glass will stick to molten glass better if they are hot.  I use a hot plate with a thin slab of metal on the hot plate as a small hot table to pre-heat and then pick up these glass elements. 

I mainly use the marble tiles on the ground for forming the bottom of some pieces.  The optic molds are made of aluminum.   Pushing the hot molten bubble into them adds a ribbed effect to pieces.  I made ornament holders out of a coffee can lined with fireproof fiber.   This provides a place to hold the ornament and keep it hot while a glass hanger is added to the top.

Glory Hole & Exhaust Hood

The glory hole station is the glory hole, exhaust system, pipe stand, battery backup, and propane tanks and regulator.

The glory hole is a giant ‘torch turned sideways in a bucket’.    The heat from the glory hole is the reason you need the hood and exhaust system.  It is an angry monster spewing massive heat.   It is only lit and turned on during glassblowing sessions.   This is the roaring glowing hot heat source where your work is reheated. Molten glass from the furnace will turn stiff in about a minute.    Pieces are continually re-heated in the glory hole so they remain workable.   

A typical glory hole is expensive to purchase and they usually run on natural gas.   The cost of a glory hole will be larger as the size grows larger.    I decided on a propane glory hole.  Mine has a blower to greatly increase the heat, and it runs on propane.        

The glory hole is from Sundance Glass in California.  It is a fiber glory hole. The opening is about 14 inches wide and the glory hole is perhaps 20 inches deep.  But the torch is set in the glory hole about 4 inches back.   So the maximum size of a piece I can make is about 15 inches tall.    Anything taller and I cannot keep the bottom of the piece hot.   Heat on a piece has to remain even or the piece will not survive when it cools down.   

The propane glory hole is probably the one piece of equipment that I might eventually replace.   I am trying to decide whether or not to do that.  It would involve running a long gas line extension from the house to the shop, and purchasing a different glory hole.   It would be an expensive upgrade.

The annoying thing about the propane glory hole is the pressure in the propane tank drops as it empties.   You don’t notice this on your home barbeque until the tank is near empty.  But it is quite noticeable with this equipment!  On your home barbeque, the small propane tank will fry burgers all summer long before the tank is empty.   That same tank, working on the glory hole empties in about 3 hours.   The glory hole uses about a gallon of propane per hour and it runs on about 5 psi of pressure, much higher than natural gas.    When the pressure drops, the heat drops, then the propane glory hole becomes only marginally hot enough to work the glass.   

My solution to the pressure problem was to connect two tanks together while working.    I currently use 2 tanks for the glory hole and another tank for the pipe warmer.  The pressure is kept constant and stable with an adjustable regulator.  Because the pressure changes slightly, the adjustable regulator allows me to feed more or less propane to compensate.   I also put a dimmer switch on the glory hole blower.   The dimmer allows me to fine tune the speed of the glory hole blower.  

When I go for a propane refill it is a three tank fill.   To help get the tanks from my car to the back yard, I toss them in the trash can and the wheels on the trash can make for a giant dolly to be able to carry 100 pounds of propane all in one trip.   Propane refills are no fun, but creative use of the trash can makes it a bit easier.        

I tried to get propane companies to put a large propane tank in my back yard, but they would not do it.  Because the glory hole is a high pressure system, they could not legally run propane to my shop.    I am stuck with a constant chore of going to refill the propane tanks.   If you can set up for a natural gas line to your shop area, you will be much better off in the long run as there is no re-filling chore, and a natural gas glory hole will be much more temperature stable.   I can’t recommend the propane glory hole. It is a viable option as an entry level or intermediate glory hole only.

The glory hole blower is plugged into a battery backup I purchased as a safety measure.  My worry was that in case of a power outage, the blower would cease, which could cause the glory hole flame to cut out from a sudden change in the fuel-to-air mix.  This could cause propane to billow out and form a dangerous cloud.     The battery backup keeps the blower running for a couple of minutes in case of a power outage and keeps the glory hole working.   This will allow time to shut off the glory hole properly and avoid any risk of gas buildup in the event of a power failure.

Pipe Cooler

During glassblowing sometimes a blowpipe will become too hot and you must cool it down.   I made a pipe cooler from a small plastic trash can, a fountain pump, pvc piping, and various metal pieces.    To cool the pipe, you rest the blowpipe in the center metal tray while the stream of water cools it.   I don’t use mine very much, but it is a ‘must have’ piece of equipment.  Hot blowpipes must be cooled! 

Most burns from glassblowing are not from touching hot glass.   The molten glowing glass screams out “don’t touch me.”  Burns happen from far less obvious means.   Touching an overly hot blowpipe, or touching the blowpipe in the wrong place, or touching a pickup bowl or the marver table can burn you (ouch!).  Metal surfaces retain the heat for a while.    You must always assume metal surfaces are hot.   

When making the pipe cooler, start by drilling a few holes in the PVC pipe and turn on the fountain pump to test.   You adjust the stream by adjusting the holes.   To make less pressure and a shorter water stream simply add holes or enlarge them.    Drill one hole at a time and test the results.   Each hole or hole enlargement will reduce the fountain pump pressure.    

Bench

The glassblower’s bench is the star of the show.    When working ceramics, clay pieces are ‘thrown’ on the pottery wheel.   Glass pieces are worked while rolling along the glassblowing bench rails.    Be mindful of rail measurements.    At my glass class the rails on the glassblowing benches were too wide.   The school blowpipes would roll the rails on the thicker handle on one rail and on the thinner pipe on the other rail.   It made the blowpipe roll crooked!   You don’t want your blowpipe to roll crooked, especially if you are new at glassblowing.  I was painfully aware of this issue from glass class.   I purchased my blowpipes before I had a bench.   This allowed me to measure the prime rolling areas of my blowpipes and tell me the best distance I wanted between each rail.  My bench was custom made using my rail separation measurement.   My blowpipes roll with the handles off the rails as they should.   They roll straight all the time! 

At the bench station is a pipe hanger, which is a simple broom rack clip.    When doing solo glassblowing no one is bringing you a punty.   You hang your hot piece in the hanger and go and get your own punty.

The bench station includes all of your glassblowing hand tools.   Water buckets, shaping blocks, jacks for working the glass, paddles for bottom and edge shaping, picks for poking and pulling, glassblowing tweezers and shears, and beeswax. And newspaper.  Yes, newspaper is a glassblowing tool.  The Wall Street Journal is the best!  Less expensive newsprint leaves more ash debris.    Buy the best jacks and tweezers that you can afford.  Glass jacks and glass tweezers are the tools that are used the most. 

I added rolling bearings on the end of the bench rails.    The bearings allow you to spin the glass on the blowpipe in place without any horizontal movement.    It is helpful when doing wraps and adding bits to pieces.   

Annealer

The annealing kiln cools the glass very slowly overnight. Annealing stabilizes and strengthens the glass.   Rapid temperature drops will make hot glass pieces break.   Non-annealed pieces can sometimes survive cool down, but will be fragile and possibly dangerous.  

My annealing kiln is three feet around and about a foot deep.  The lid on this kiln is very heavy and is counterbalanced with a duffle bag of sand.    The counter balance allows the kiln lid to be opened easily with one hand.    This size annealing kiln will hold about a dozen finished pieces.   It could hold more or less depending on the size of the items you are making.   Once you are out of room in the kiln, your blowing session is done.  

The final step of glassblowing is to remove the glass from the punty rod and transfer it to the annealer.    I have a ‘knock off box’ and high temperature gloves right next to the annealer.  My knock off box is a baking pan with a piece of fireproof fiber board in it.   The knock off box catches the hot glass safely.    After removing from the punty rod you quickly put on the high temperature gloves and pick up the glass and put it away in the annealer.     

Safety

Various items are necessary for safety.  Heavy-duty equipment requires safety measures.

Eye Protection – Be sure to use special didymium safety glassblowing glasses to screen out any harmful rays from the equipment that can damage eyesight. If you stare at the glowing equipment long enough it is dangerous like staring at the sun.   Look away frequently.   Don’t Stare.   Protective glasses will also protect against any small pieces of flying glass in the event a piece might shatter.

I use a sweatband to prevent sweat from stinging my eyes while working.   It is not good to be working molten glass when your eyes are stinging and running and sweat is blurring your vision!    It is not always so hot that sweat runs down.  I will usually wear the sweatband just in case.        

Protective Clothing – A long sleeve cotton shirt, long pants, and closed toed shoes is advisable.  I have fireproof kevlar sleeves for additional protection.    It is not “cool” to do glassblowing like a hippie in flip flops and skimpy attire.   I call that “foolish.”

Temperature Monitoring – Glassblowing equipment will heat your shop little by little as you work.   Monitor your shop temperature.   I have multiple thermometers in the workshop for this purpose.  I look at them all the time.   If the shop feels overheated or if you are feeling dizzy or weak, stop working and end the session!  Don’t risk heatstroke while working. Or at least shut off the glory hole and take a break!  Always drink and stay hydrated during blowing.

Ventilation – The shop must be properly ventilated.    I have a giant shop fan and several small fans running while I work.  The fans are all pointed in the same direction.    They pull air in through the rear windows and create a stream of air exiting through the large front double doors.   This is important for several reasons.   An air stream will exit any harmful fumes.   The cross ventilation will prevent any cloud of propane gas from developing in case of a propane leak.   The stream of air will help keep the shop environment cool and reduce the risk of an overly hot environment.    

Dust – Powdered glass can be an inhalation hazard.   I rarely use any powdered glass for this reason.  Most of my color is added using crushed glass frit that is larger than powder size.   Use a dust mask when sweeping the studio.

Cuts – I cut myself a lot.  You can count on getting cut.  It is usually from handling a finished piece that has a rough punty area.  Or cuts will happen from picking up a pretty looking piece of broken glass from the shop floor.   I use band aids.   Fortunately I have not been seriously cut.    Stop working and seek medical attention for any serious cut.   

Fire Protection – Hot glass will fall to the floor.   It happens.    The glassblowing shop floor must be fireproof.   A slab floor is best.   I have cement board floors in my shop working area.   I also use them to line the walls behind the hottest equipment.   In addition to the shop fireproofing, always keep a fire extinguisher and an extra bucket of water available.  I also have aloe burn cream handy.   You can count on being burned once in a while.   

General Safety – Create shop rules and enforce them (no running/no smoking).   Keep exits clear at all times.  Keep the floor swept.  Provide safety glasses and designated ‘safe zones’ for anyone viewing while you work.    Use a checklist to turn equipment on and off.  Keep your cell phone handy.  Think up all the ways that you can to be safe. 

Chapter 7 - Blow For It!

Now everything is set.   Turn on the Furnace!   Let’s begin!

Well, maybe not that fast.   You see, the crucible kiln furnace must be brought up to temperature very slowly.  The Crucible is like a big crock pot inside the kiln, and you have to ramp the temperature up very slowly so the crucible will not break.    For my crucible, once you pass 1200 degrees then the critical zone (temperature most likely to break the crucible) is clear and you are free add glass and increase to higher temperatures as fast as you like.   The starting ramp up takes about 3 days, because I set my temperature to increase by only 30 degrees per hour.

Once past 1200 degrees, I set the kiln to stay and idle at about 1500 degrees.   The craziest part about this whole glassblowing thing is that you are now “married to the pot”.    I say that in jest, but it is so true.   The crucible kiln stays at your set temperature 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as long as your blowing season might be.    I know a full time glassblower who blows every day and has the same crucible kilns as mine.  He said the top of the kilns tend to break down over time.   His kilns are set at 2100 degrees (glassblowing working temperature) so the glassblowers in their studio can start blowing right away every day.  That is a fine glass working temperature.    But, I was not blowing every day.   My shop was in the back room of a wood frame building.   I decided 2100 degrees was too hot for my comfort zone to leave it that way 24/7.  My kiln idle temperature is 1490 degrees.    I program the furnace kiln to increase up to the 2100 degrees only when I want to blow.    

There are consequences to every decision you make in glassblowing.  Deciding to idle my crucible kiln at a lower temperature meant that I could not immediately blow glass.  If I wanted to blow that day, I would have to increase the furnace kiln temperature to blowing temp and then wait until it got there.   Because you have to heat 30 to 50 pounds of glass in the crucible, it took a couple of hours to increase from 1490 to 2100 degrees.   You have to plan ahead and work it out. If I were to blow from 5pm to 8pm…. then I have to turn the crucible up at 2:30 pm to allow for the ramp up time. This trade-off made me feel better.    1400 degrees sounds hot but it is fairly ‘cool’ as compared to 2100 degrees.   And the equipment is made for high temperatures.  I slept better at night knowing the kiln was ‘cooler’.     I kept a thick fireproof fiber blanket on the top of the kiln.    I did this to reduce ambient heat and hopefully to save some electricity.    I put fire bricks underneath the kiln just in case of catastrophic kiln failure (I imagined a crucible breaking and molten glass spilling onto the floor-very unlikely actually).   

The crucible kiln is still a worry factor.  You can’t watch it all day and all night.  You have to walk away and hope everything will be all right.   You have to hope there won’t be a power outage that crash cools the kiln which might break the ceramic vessel inside.   You have to hope your electrical system and wiring will not overheat and cause a fire.   You have to live by faith in your equipment, because you don’t really have a choice.    That is probably the worst part about glassblowing.    Besides the worry about the equipment running all day and night, you are also paying for the electricity for the privilege of keeping the glass molten.  You can’t really turn glassblowing on and off.   Due to the slow heating time over three days and a similar cool down time it is not practical to turn it on and off.  The furnace kiln must be left on.   So it feels like you HAVE to blow glass.  In reality you have to blow on a regular schedule or you have wasted your electricity and everything else that goes with it.    You are now beholden to the glass furnace.   It sort of makes you ‘gulp’ and think , ‘what have I done?’

So when everything was set and the kiln was at 1490 degrees, I added glass to the crucible about 4 pounds at a time.    The procedure is to add glass, wait an hour or so for that to melt and for the kiln temperature to stabilize, and repeat until the crucible has 30-40 pounds of glass in it.    Now turn up the temperature to 2100 (a few hours ahead of time).    Now we can start glassblowing…   I add glass to the crucible at the end of every blowing session while it is nice and hot to keep it full.      

The first time the furnace is hot, the annealer is on, and you light the glory hole, it’s a little unsettling.  The equipment is so hot.   It is a bit of a shock.   Will everything work?  Have I forgotten anything?  Did I set everything up right?  Am I going to hurt myself?   Ok, this is it …..!

They say you learn by doing and that is certainly true with setting up your own glass shop.   I made plenty of mistakes and learned from them.    I felt ignorant sometimes when I made mistakes.  I was my own glassblowing engineer, designer, and repair person.    You have to be your own Mr./Ms. Fixit.    You have to be able to do it all or have a support team that is available in a blink.     It is a big help if you have an ‘I can do anything’ mentality!

Chapter 8 - I Am My Own Intern

I began blowing in my art gallery hot shop.    The first few sessions were pretty awkward.   I had to figure out how to navigate and how to work in the tight space. It turned out my floor plan was ok. I had just enough elbow room for all of the steps.  I made a couple of easy paperweights.   I blew a couple bubbles.    In my first session I failed at transferring a piece to a punty rod.  I was very rusty by this time.  It had been a few years since glass class.   The equipment felt awkward and strange, but overall everything worked well.  It was rewarding to see the equipment working as it should and glassblowing would be successful in my new studio.   Now it was a matter of getting used to the new equipment and the space and operating within the space.

By the third or fourth session, I felt I was at the same skill level at least as what I was in glass class.  Similar to riding a bike – it comes back to you. I could make glass objects.  It was very noticeable that my equipment ran at lower temperatures than the equipment at glass class, which took some getting used to.   I was so excited to blow glass! I tried doing many pieces that were beyond my skill level.  At that time they didn’t turn out like I wanted.    Some pieces were on the thick side, and could be described as a bit clunky.   My daughter said I was the “organic glass blower” (thanks, I think?).    I did eventually sell most of the glass from my first blowing season.  What? People wanted to hand me money for this little thing that I made?  It was a strange and new concept.

I had no product line and no idea what I ought to be making.  I was a directionless ship.   So the plan was to play and to try colors, shapes, and varying sizes.    I drew upon my glass collection for inspiration.   I love the “jack in the pulpit” shape – so I tried that over and over.    I tried pulling on the top edge of the vases in many different ways.  I was hoping to come up with something different.    There is tons of glass out there.   What style would mine be?

I knew at that time my glass was ‘beginner’ so I didn’t attempt art events right away.   I knew my work was not ready for shops and galleries yet.   I was happy to play and experiment.    I was my own intern.  There was no one to teach me, so I had to learn by trial and error.   I tried pushing the envelope in shapes and sizes.  Those were the ‘good old days’ of my glassblowing.   The results didn’t really matter much and I was free to try whatever I could think of.     

Chapter 9 - Ten Thousand Hours

Stuff happens.   The key is to figure out how to NOT let that happen again. Just smile and laugh at yourself.  Get over the dumb mistakes and move along.

I made some mistakes with my glory hole. When I first set it up, I tried to run it on natural gas.   But the maker had set it up to run on propane. I was told it would run on either, but it was not explained to me that it would need to be reconfigured with a different orifice and a different burner to run on natural gas.  I did get it to light on natural gas, but it ran way too cold.   So rather than try to reconfigure the glory hole to natural gas, I went with propane that the equipment was built to use.   I soon found out the disadvantage of running a propane glory hole.   The heat in the glory hole would lessen as the propane tank became empty and the pressure decreased.  Or if it was really cold outside, the cold would affect the propane tank and produce less pressure and less heat.  If you can’t get the glass hot you can’t work it correctly.   If things are running cold, each step tends to take longer and you lose a lot of time reheating your work.  In addition, rather than being connected to a gas supply line, when the tank empties there is the chore of going to fill it up.    I think my glory hole is my worst piece of equipment because of the inconsistent temperature.  It becomes more challenging to blow glass when your glory hole operating temperatures vary from session to session.  I still have this issue and learning to live with it.    I highly recommend a natural gas glory hole if you can work that out. 

One day I was blowing glass and went to put a piece away and discovered I had forgotten to turn on the annealing kiln.    Well, that piece was ruined.     At least I was able to continue working after turning on the annealer. 

One session I spent ten minutes just trying to light the glory hole.   I would get weird plumes of flames going on.   What was the problem? ‘Oh’, I had forgotten to turn on the glory hole blower.  I was basically lighting the propane stream straight out of the tank with no air blower.  There are many ways to make mistakes during glassblowing.

During another session I had forgotten to soak my newspaper ahead of time and I was unable to shape the piece I was working on.    Another piece was ruined because of that error.

It is easy to make heat errors while working the glass.   Spun-out pieces will often explode in the annealer.   Footed Jack in the pulpit vases often cracked overnight.    I never really knew if I had a successful piece of glass until the next day after blowing to see if the pieces survived the cool down process.    Some pieces actually cracked a week or two after they were finished.  That was always discouraging.  Sometimes I had no idea why a piece broke.    Other times, I knew I had used incompatible glass in the piece.   Or maybe I had touched it with tweezers one too many times and created a cool spot in the piece.  The discouragements were balanced by the stimulation.  Each day after glassblowing felt like Christmas!   What did the pieces I made actually look like?  I always had an idea whether my pieces for the session were either good or bad.  There is nervous anticipation hoping and waiting to see if the glass you made was as good as you remembered. Did it survive?   If it broke or cracked then maybe try that piece again next time.  If the piece did survive hooray!!

Glassblowing takes practice, practice, and more practice.  One customer told me it was easy to become good at anything but it took “10,000 hours to reach proficiency.” That is a lot of hours.   I think one can be proficient much sooner than that.   

One thing they stressed in glass class was not to worry about failure. That was some really great advice.  It was perfect advice.  The failure rate in glassblowing is very high.  If a piece you are working on breaks, spirals out of balance, gets overworked, is overheated or otherwise wrecked, you just start over and try again.    An artist friend of mine told me one of my pieces had a good idea behind it but “needed refinement”.    That was a really nice way of saying keep working on it.  

I saw a video on PBS Television about Fenton Art Glass.    At one point in the special, they showed this big pile of rejected glass that were not up to standard and were failures.    It was impressive because even professional glassblowers have a high failure rate.   I doubt anyone is actually good at glassblowing when they first try it or first start.    It is one of those things that requires a lot of practice and experience.    The best advice I can give you is to keep your chin up and head in the game no matter the failures, and your glass will get better as you go.  

In a heartbeat the masterpiece you are working can go bad.  Slight over blowing can change the shape.  If there is a thinner spot in the side wall it can blow out crooked.  If the piece is not on center, that problem grows worse as you make the piece bigger.   There are hundreds of ways to go wrong.   It takes much practice.

One time I had forgotten to turn on a critical fan and the shop heated up very quickly and I had to stop working.  I did not realize my error until I had shut everything down.    Only then did I realize certain fans were not turned on.   

Sometimes you feel like the big bad wolf, doing a lot of huffing and puffing.  If you take a gather of glass onto the blowpipe, and perhaps shape it too long on the marver, you can end up blowing too much.    Anytime you touch the glass to something you are cooling it.   Sometimes your starter bubble can become too cool and it won’t blow out.  I no longer try to blow that hard any more.  I have blown so hard sometimes that it hurts.   No need, it is a rookie mistake.    Reheat the bubble so it is soft enough to blow, or trash it and begin again.  But don’t over blow. In a later chapter I talk a bit more about ways to fail while glassblowing with some fun pictures of the failures.

I was beholden to the outside temperatures.  Glassblowing is a hot and sweaty affair.    It seemed that any temperature over 65 degrees outside was too warm to be able to cool down the back room.    Blowing season became September to April.   After that it was too warm out.

It is from problems and mistakes like these that my blowing checklist was born.   The list was not in writing but it is in my head.   My checklist follows below:

Step 1- Bring the glass furnace to working temperature.  That is the very first step – adjust the temperature a few hours prior to your session to raise the molten glass to working temperature of 2080 degrees.

Step 2 – All Heat sources on.  Light the pipe warmer oven and place all pipes and puntys on the oven rack to heat.   Turn on the hot plate if it is to be used for the session.

Step 3- Make sure the ‘5 mistakes’ (as I call them) are not repeated (1-fiber blanket moved off the top of the furnace, 2-turn on the glory hole blower, 3-turn on the pipe cooler, 4-turn on the annealer, 5-soak the newspaper, and wax the jacks).   I made all these mistakes and they were major enough to go onto my startup checklist.

Step 4 - Open up and fan up – Open all doors and windows.  Turn on all exhaust fans and air flow fans.

Step 5 -Safety up – Check the water in buckets; check exits; make sure cell phone is in sight; make sure fire extinguisher is handy; put on protective eyewear, sweatband, and fire resistant sleeves.

Step 6  - Light the glory hole and begin.    The routine is important.   Commit it to memory or to writing.   Missing something can wreck your work, or worse. 

I only burned myself a couple of times during glassblowing at the gallery.   And that was very lightly from touching the blowpipe too high up.  I touched the blowpipe too close to the top where the hot glass was.   The burn was light and mostly faded out by the end of the next day.    You will let go really fast when you grab something hot like that.     

I also had a shut down checklist. 

Step 1 – Turn off the glory hole gas.   Disconnect and move the propane tanks outside.

Step 2 - Shut off all other heat sources.   Turn off hot plate.  Turn off the pipe warmer oven.  Set the Annealer to run the overnight annealing program.  Set the crucible furnace to its idle temperature of 1490.  

Step 3 - Add more glass to the crucible to replace the glass that was used. Replace the fiber blanket on the crucible kiln lid. 

Step 4 – Fan Down.   All fans are left running for a while after the glass blowing session has ended.  When the shop has cooled, turn off glory hole blower.    Turn off ventilation and air flow fans.

Step 5 -  Put all tools away and make sure the work area is clear.   

The shut down procedures added about ½ an hour to the end of each glassblowing session.     

Just when you think things are under control, they aren’t.   I came in one day to see that the crucible kiln was at 700+ degrees instead of the expected 1490 degrees.   There is a safety cutoff switch so when the lid on that kiln is opened, the kiln turns off.    The idea is the power isn’t on to the elements when the lid is up and you cannot accidentally electrocute yourself by putting a metal blowpipe into the kiln wiring on accident.   The little arm on the lid that pushes down on the matching switch on the base (to keep the kiln on) had slipped past it instead.   This effectively shut the kiln off after my blowing session.   The kiln thought the lid was up and shut off.   I fixed the problem by gluing a larger piece of metal to the bottom part of the switch so the top part could no longer slip past. 

In my second year of blowing I came in to the gallery hot shop to find the crucible kiln again at about 700 degrees.   This time it was making a strange buzzing noise.  It was very clear that the relay that cycled the kiln on and off had failed.   I had to shut down that year in the middle of my blowing season and seek out a kiln repair person.   It turns out there was a good kiln guy in town.   Now I have the kiln repair guy replace the relay part before every blowing season as a preventative maintenance routine.  It is better to fix it regularly than have a kiln shut down event.   It’s like giving your car a tune-up each year.  It keeps running better in the long run that way.

Another time I went to begin a session and I could not open the valve on the propane tank.  I got out a pair of pliers and used those on the valve handle.   Well the handle simply broke.   Quite unexpectedly the propane tank valve seized shut.    This breakdown only cost me a half an hour as I drove to the local hardware depot and was able to swap out the tank.   The lesson here is the equipment is not infallible and it can go down on you without warning.  

Sometimes problems can grow and compound.  The crucible furnace has a collar that sits atop the ceramic crucible and closes the gap between the crucible and the kiln elements.  Over the course of a more recent glassblowing season, I was not being careful with glass gathers.   It is easy to take a gather of glass and have a thin trail dripping off of the blowpipe.   These glass trails, which are very thin like string, will accumulate and drape across the fiber board collar in my kiln.  Over a period of time, the glass drip trails on the kiln collar began to erode the fiber board collar.  It developed a small hole in it as the glass slowly ate through it.  I did not realize my equipment had this design weakness.   It caught me off guard and I did not immediately shut down.  Because I kept working with a hole in the collar,  I eventually accidentally dripped glass that got into the hole.  Glass got onto one of the kiln elements and it caused the element to fail.

The crucible furnace kiln did continue to function ok with one element out.   There are three elements total and it did work on two elements.  With only two elements functioning, the kiln took 5-6 hours to heat to working temperature.  It normally heats much faster.  As your elements age, you will notice longer heat times.   I replaced them in the fourth year as they were becoming less efficient and slower to fire.  You will have to replace kiln elements once in a while, even if nothing happens to cause a shorter element life.  If you have a kiln problem I recommend fixing it before it leads to further problems. 

Chapter 10 - Something Better

I blew glass at the gallery hot shop for about 3 years.   It was a great learning experience, but the more that I actually did glass blowing, the more I wanted a better setup.    It didn’t really work out as well as I thought it would.    It was difficult to keep gallery hours on the gallery sales floor, do taxes at tax time, ship ebay orders every day, and then try to find time here and there to blow glass.   In my first blowing season I did maybe 35 blowing sessions- from September through April.   I averaged only a little over 1 session per week.    I found it inconvenient to only blow glass after hours.  I could not blow glass while the gallery was open.   There was no way to stop working in the middle of a piece and put it down if a shopper came in.  I could not afford sales help.  It became a real time management problem.  The ‘time problem’ made glass blowing seem like it could only ever remain as an expensive hobby.     Having the glass shop at the gallery did not help me find more time to blow.   How does anybody blow glass full time?  Maybe every artist has the same problem?  You have to do work you don’t want to do to make money.    And the glass art you want to do is left to be done on the remaining amount of available time.    Are all artists frustrated like me? 

I had other issues with the gallery hot shop.   The shop and equipment worked just fine, but there were things that could be better. The first problem was one I often worried about.  I had 60 amps of equipment running on 60 amp service in an old building.   I was concerned the wiring would overheat and cause a fire.   I was worried equipment failure would cause a fire.    Over time I wanted out of the fire worry.   If I had a fire at the gallery, I could lose the whole building.  I was not sure whether my insurance would pay if they knew glassblowing equipment caused the fire.   At least if I had a fire in a backyard hot shop, just the shop would burn and it would not be as bad of a loss.

The second problem was the enclosed room.   My side venting, wall exhausts, screen door, and fans worked to some degree.  They kept the room cool for two to three hours.   But no matter the outside temperature, the space became a bit overheated after a while.  I could work for a couple of hours before having to stop for fear of heatstroke.     I figured it would be very bad to pass out from heat stroke while glassblowing.  I never did get that overheated while working.   I always limited my sessions and I knew when to stop.   I had two large thermometers that I could look at while I was working.    It became rather frustrating to find that when I did set aside time for glassblowing that I could only work for a couple hours due to the shop overheating.    

Another problem was with possible liability.   The crucible furnace ran 24 hours a day, and the back shop always had hot molten glass in it.   I did not want to risk operating a co-op style gallery, I could not get a tenant, and I could not do anything that involved people coming and going.  I worried people might be curious about the furnace kiln while I was not there and something could go wrong.  So the 24/7 aspect of the molten glass, kept me from using the building more effectively.     

I felt there had to be a better way to blow glass.

Chapter 11 - An Art Gallery Only Sounds Fun

To make a long story short, I found artists for the art gallery and took their work on consignment.   I was one of the gallery artists and I was able to sell some of my early glass.   The remainder of my gallery sales floor was filled with the work of 40 different artists.   My work would only fill a few pedestals.   Running an art gallery was more involved than I planned on.    The big recession of 2008 hit about 2 months after I opened.   Then we got overwhelmed with two solid weeks of icy ten and twenty degree weather.   Bad weather, recession, and an art gallery do not mix.   On top of that, Philomath is the town that everyone drives right through.   All the traffic at first looks appealing.   Thousands of cars per day drive through town on the way to the Oregon coast.  But there isn’t that much to make the cars stop.   There are no other artsy storefronts downtown.  Nobody expects there to be anything in Philomath. It is a whole collection of “for sale” “for rent” run-down looking places.   The cars zoomed on by and the gallery languished.    But for my other part time businesses, the gallery would cease to operate.

No, I am not a bad planner.    I did my homework ahead of time.  There were two other galleries in town before mine.   One was run by a coalition of doctor’s wives.    Another was run by a local flame-working glassblower.     Both of those galleries went out of business, so I knew going into it that business would be slow.    My sister had a stretch where she was unemployed and she came to help me decorate the gallery and to paint the display pedestals.    She said I should remove all the lights (fluorescent) and replace them with something nice and sleek.     I would not do that.   The gallery was a risk from the start and its investment needed to be minimal.  

I soon became tired of running a weak business with very light foot traffic.   It was frustrating to continually be there for “store hours”.  Short blowing sessions that ended in an overheated space were not productive. Connecting the hot shop to the gallery did not help me find more time to blow glass. I gradually came to realize that trying to operate my glass studio in a commercial building was not working. I reduced my store hours to the bone for lack of foot traffic and sales.    Running a gallery was not as enjoyable as I imagined it might be.

On way to perhaps make glassblowing work in a small town might be to take the ‘spectacle’ approach.   Create an area where the public can watch.   Allow them to “blow” into the blowpipe to “blow your own float”, making it a tourist attraction.   If I could have done that, it might have been a success.  But I didn’t have enough experience as a glass blower to be able to work with the public.  I had no team of glassblowers that could do it.     The building had a fancy sales floor that was not suited for glassblowing in any way.  At the time, I didn’t have the blowing experience needed to entertain a crowd nor did I want to. 

I still have the building and could try the tourist attraction approach or do a co-operative style gallery if I want to.   If I were to try a co-op gallery, the artist team might be able to afford advertising and the store hours could be covered by shifts.   I have passed on those possibilities for the time being.   I passed on them so I could focus on my glassblowing.          

Customers can be very nosy.  Because it is a gallery in a slow economy just about everyone asks how the gallery is doing.  I think many are shocked the gallery is still operating.  Customers suggest “just advertise”, “do events”, “do shows”.    After opening an art gallery you do quickly learn that a 24/7 promotional effort is needed.    Promotions such as artist of the month, press releases, shows, advertising, sign spinners, social media, and special sales are needed to fuel exposure for the gallery.  My dream was to blow glass, not to run a gallery.  The gallery was only there incidentally. The bills were paid by my other business activities.    I saw the galleries preceding mine in Philomath had each gone out of business.   And those galleries had teams of people working them.    With teams of people and multiple resources to draw on, those galleries still failed.    It was against the odds that I might have a successful gallery combined with juggling three other part time jobs.

One customer actually told me I was smart not to promote the gallery.  She said she had a friend back east with an art gallery.  That gallery owner had discovered some great art and decided to do a show.   She did marketing geared toward the affluent in the area.  She advertised in different media, hired catering, and basically went all out to showcase her gallery and its new art.   Bottom line is the event was fabulous but there were no sales.   The gallery owner had lost $10,000 spent just on doing the show.   I agreed with this customer.  Given the small town history of two prior failed galleries, it seemed clear to me that promotion and advertising would be wasted effort and lost money.     The gallery is ‘there’ and I was hoping to attract sales and income.  I can’t throw financial support at it.  I was hoping the industrial chic design of the gallery would be more attractive than the other galleries.  In our rural country setting however, maybe knotty pine paneling and a country feel might have been a better match for the demographics.

I am very encouraged that my glass gets a little better each year.   I have come a long way from glass class!   It was very easy to see progress from one blowing season to the next.   One day, I was reading famous glassblower Dale Chihuly’s website and saw he did not actually sell any glass that he made for ten years!  That was both shocking and encouraging to know I needed to be patient.   I knew over time I would become better at it.  

Because of the issues I had with the gallery hot shop, I didn’t want to continue glassblowing at the gallery. In the long run the gallery hot shop served its purpose.  I was able to obtain 3 years of glassblowing experience while there.   I decided to make a backyard hot shop that was better suited and more specifically designed for glassblowing. Hopefully that would fix a lot of problems and allow for more glassblowing time.  But that was not an easy swap.  What was I to do with the commercial building and my house? 

It was time to sell both house and gallery building.   I decided to buy a house that would work for glassblowing in the back yard, and then sell the gallery to eliminate the expense.    I had gone to a lot of trouble setting up for glassblowing so it was not an easy decision to make these changes.    It was not easy, but it was for the best.

The art gallery was not enjoyable for me.   It was more work than I expected.  It felt like I was participating in community service when people browsed for a long time without buying.   Maybe it was nice for the community to say there was an art gallery in town, but there was no reward in it. Unwanted customer suggestions to run promotions did not convince me they would create profits.   Take my advice and only try an art gallery if that is your dream. If your town is already tourist oriented and there are other long standing art galleries, then one could possibly succeed.    If your town is downtrodden and there is a history of failed art galleries in town, don’t even think about opening one!!  

Chapter 12 - Going Home

They call it the great recession, and it is.   It seems to be never ending.    Jobs are hard to come by in our small town.   Unemployment in Oregon at one point was as high as 12% which is near depression levels.  In this environment I was trying to sell a bigger house on a hill and an art gallery.    Both properties were for sale for over a year and neither sold.     The slow local economy has lingered for five or six years, and we are still not out of it.   I know the meaning of real estate “house arrest” very well.   It freezes you and you can’t make the changes you want to make.  

I was not going to be held prisoner by the economy.    I rented out my house. After a couple of false starts, I got a really good, prompt paying, and trouble free tenant.  That was certainly a big relief!   

With the slow economy my commercial building also would not sell.  I had only one prospect look at it in over a year of having it listed.   I had no choice but to continue to keep the art gallery going.   I continued to lose interest in running a gallery.   I called or wrote to all the artists and started the process of having them pick up their art.   It was time to go ahead and fill the gallery with my own glass.    Now any sales from the gallery would be all mine at 100 cents on the dollar instead of at a commission.  

Residential house hunting took many months of looking.    I had a downsized price range and I wanted to stick to it.    My realtor kept showing me great properties I could not afford.   And the ones I could afford were not ideal. I wasn’t in any kind of a rush.  I wanted something that would work.

I bought a home on a standard ¼ acre lot, and the backyard had the space for a shop. There was no driveway access to the back yard.   The house sits next to a city walkway connecting my street and the next.   Along the wide walkway there was a small and a large gate in my fence. This provided walk up and dolly roll up access to the back yard, but you can’t drive a car into it.   That was fine for me because I was not making an automotive shop.

The home was newer with a modern open layout and it did not require any rehab or repair work.    It was a smaller house yet big enough to be comfortable.  I knew this is where I would stay for a while and do the hot shop up right. I could now create the backyard hot shop I had been dreaming of!

Chapter 13 - The Opportunity

Glassblowing obviously does not ‘just happen’.    You have to work your part to make it happen.   You have to put in those 10,000 hours toward refinement.   The shop and the equipment do not come from a catalog for easy ordering.  I feel fortunate to have an unusual set of circumstances that enable me to blow glass.    Along the way, many pieces fell into place very easily. 

When I bought the gallery building, it went very smoothly.  It was the brand new bank manager’s first loan and he was eager to make a deal.   It was easily approved.   

Things in the gallery setup went very well.   Windows were already missing where I needed to remove them.   The layout was exactly what I was looking for.  I stumbled upon the display pedestals from the old gallery in town and was able to buy them very inexpensively. 

I said earlier that I rented out my house and bought another house with a yard more suited for glassblowing.  That is true.    A funny thing happened though when I made the move.   After being in the new house for a couple of years, the economy began to improve.    I got a call from my tenants that were renting my old house.   They made me an offer on it, and I was able to sell.  Housing prices had not completely recovered and I had a loss on the sale.   It was ok because I was relieved of the mortgage liability.   The remarkable thing was the zero effort.   No fix up expenses, no painting, no carpeting, no stager, no realtor.   It just basically sold itself.   The house went from unable to sell, to ‘sold’.  Escrow closed without any issues.   It was sold just like that.  That was pretty amazing.

The same sort of thing happened with the art gallery building.   In moving the hot shop to my house, I was able to gain revenue from the space where the gallery hot shop used to be.  I went to a local chamber of commerce luncheon one day and met a bookkeeper that wanted to downsize from his large office space. Very easily and quickly I had a tenant for the back two rooms of my gallery.  I had to prepare the space with some paint and put in a new floor, but a tenant really helped me financially.  Rent income from the bookkeeper tenant helped pay for part of the building payment.   Sadly, my bookkeeper tenant wasn’t in the back for very long.    He moved out to work out of his home for health reasons.    My financial rental boost was short lived.    I was back to covering the expense of the art gallery without having it generate any significant revenue.   It was eight or nine months after the consignment artists removed their art, and after the bookkeeper moved out, that a group of three people wandered into the galley one afternoon.    It was my neighbors.   Two of the next door building owners had a possible tenant with them looking at their buildings.   Because they knew I used to have a tenant, my neighbors asked if I wished to show my space.   It was super nice of them to do that.    They really had the prospects’ interest in mind and wanted the best space that would work for her.   At the time I didn’t have any kind of “for rent” ad out.   My neighbors just thought of me.   Out of the clear blue sky I landed an even better tenant.   She took the back two rooms and half of my sales floor.    The rent from my new tenant now pays my mortgage, and I still have a glass showroom and a place to meet tax clients.

Getting relieved of the costs related to my real estate ‘indiscretions’ was a big financial help.    It surprised me how those ducks lined up all by themselves.   I was miraculously relieved of the rental losses on two properties.   It just happened and it truly felt like a gift.  The gallery building is still a concern.  Clearly tenants will come and go over time.  I would prefer to be out of it altogether. 

Because of my tax work and online cosmetics sales, I have financial support, and I have flexible hours.   I have much lower overhead now working out of my back yard.   I have a good amount of co-ordination to be able to work with my hands.   I have good creativity to engineer solutions to glassblowing problems.   Everything I am describing here is circumstances that allow me to learn the glass business slowly.   How other people do it, I do not know.   I need to learn as I go and I am in a position where that can happen.  

Circumstances have lined up to allow me to take a shot at the glass business.   The tax business can be built up later if necessary.   This feels like my opportunity.   I will take my shot at it.   Things are in place for me to be able to make glassblowing more of a career and less of a hobby.   I do feel very exposed and vulnerable entering into the world of glass art.   If I fail at glassblowing, then it is bye-bye dream, and I will have to go and find a full time job or more tax work.    

           Dream to stay, or fly away ?

Chapter 14 - Version 2.0 Backyard Hot Shop

I bought the house in the summer and it took me about a year to get the hot shop fully set up.    Just the process of moving is a huge inconvenience and takes several months to recover from.     After getting settled, I decided to start on the shop.  I was studying the sheds for sale at my local hardware depot.   One or two of them on display just about looked large enough for a glassblowing shop.   This led me to take a look at the shed company’s website, and I eventually called them.  In talking to Tuff Shed, a pre-fabricated shed company, they could put in a building in a couple of days.   They said the site had to be prepared and an installation date scheduled, but if those two things are done, then the actual build would be only a couple of days.    

I really liked the sound of that.   It made life easy as it eliminated the need to get competing bids from contractors.   It eliminated any worry of hiring a poor contractor doing shoddy work.   It eliminated the worry of having construction workers hanging around for weeks.   I could rely on the standard consistent product that I knew Tuff Shed would deliver.    Perhaps I could have built the shop a bit cheaper, but for me, Tuff Shed worked.

Tuff Shed had a lot of shed options available.   I picked the barn style shed with a high roofline to give plenty of overhead air space for hot air to rise.    I made choices the best I could to set up for glass blowing.   The options I asked for were 2 spinning turbine vents on top to exit hot air.   I chose an attic style vent on either end of the building near the top of the roofline.   The attic vents would be used for my commercial exhaust system and my attic exhaust fan. The building would have four windows.    I opted for two sets of six foot doors that could be opened outward to really be able to open the building up.   I chose my paint, roofing, and trim colors.  I had experience with a 15 by 15 foot shop space.   I requested a 16 foot by 20 foot building that I knew would provide more room that what I had before.   I also opted for a partial loft for storage space.  The salesperson worked up a quote for me, but I did not send any money right away.   It was not cheap, and I wasn’t ready.    I needed to get the site preparation done first.    

The Tuff Shed salesperson drafted a basic plan layout for me.   The shop had to be 4 feet from the property lines.   The area I had chosen in my yard for the shop had a couple of trees that needed to be removed.  They said the steel beam foundation could be laid directly on the ground, but they recommended a 4 to 6 inch compressed gravel base for a foundation (as an alternative to a slab) to prevent settling.   I knew I did not need a slab, as the cement board worked just fine.   Gravel was my foundation choice.

Once again it was superhero Dad to the rescue.    He came and helped me chop down the two trees.    A few weeks later after I had finished clearing the ground for the shop area, he came again.   On gravel delivery day he ran the landscape equipment we used to move the gravel to the back yard.    We rented this little ‘walk behind bulldozer machine’ that was pretty amazing.   The bucket on the skid steer loader easily held several hundred pounds of gravel.  The loader could scoop gravel right off the ground.   Then it powered along at a walking pace to move it to the back yard for dumping.   We had the entire pile of gravel moved from the front yard to the back yard in only a couple of hours.  I raked each bucket load into place as it was dumped while Dad just kept delivering them.

Now that the site preparation was complete, I issued a check to Tuff Shed for the deposit they required to begin fabrication of my shop. Shortly afterward, they called back with a scheduling window.  My shop would be built very soon!!

A couple of months later shop build day was here!   The Tuff Shed lead installer came by the house and assembled the foundation.  Because it was greater than four inches out of level there was an extra leveling fee.   The foundation and leveling took a good part of the first day.   The next day a flat bed truck arrived with the shop in large prefabricated pieces.   They really did a wonderful pre-fab job.   It was amazing to watch their team work.   By the end of the day the shop was completely built!   The city inspector only wanted rain gutters, which I installed myself.  With the city permit approved, the shop was good to go.  

I had already set up the gallery hot shop before at the art gallery.  It was pretty simple at this point to break it all down and move it to the new backyard shop.   My movers and I moved the cement board panels.   We moved all the equipment.  I disassembled and moved the venting ducting and system of fans.  I had an electrician disassemble and move most of the electrical system.    Because I had already set the shop up, moving it and setting it up again was much easier than setting it up from scratch.  

BACKYARD HOT SHOP PHOTOS

I had to re-work the pulley counterbalance system for the kiln lids.    I had to re-do and re-install the ventilation hood and ducting.  I had to re-mount all the cement board.  I put in various shelving and lighting.  I did a lot of the setup while waiting on the electrical which was being scheduled.  Once it was built, I probably had the backyard shop ready in about a month.   The setup went faster this time as most of the components were already assembled and just needed to be moved from the gallery.

I spent a couple of weeks digging my own electrical trench from the house back to the shop.  Even with a trenching shovel that was a bit of work. It would have been nice if I could have just paid the electrician to do the whole thing, but digging my own trench saved money on the electrical installation.  The electrician put in 100 amp service.   Now the shop was officially ‘alive’ and powered up.     

The floor plan was better and more open than I had at the gallery.  I knew it would work well.  I even had room for a viewing area in the back behind the glassblowing floor.      

Now that I had my new backyard shop it was time to make it work.

Chapter 15 - Working in the Backyard Hot Shop 

I wasn’t nearly as nervous starting up the hot shop in the new backyard shop.  I had been using the equipment for a while and knew what to expect.   There were no unwelcome surprises in my new shop.  Everything worked great. 

I had a fun surprise during my second glass blowing session in the new shop.   A little birdie flew into the shop.    He sat on the floor about 3 feet inside the door and looked at me while I was working a hot piece.  He cocked his head back and forth a few times watching me while I looked at him.   Then he turned and left.   I guess he was wondering what was going on in his yard.   I feel like my new shop is now birdie blessed and approved. 

I soon became very worried about the neighbors.  On my third (or fourth?) blowing session the sky began to rumble and the earth began to quake.   No, wait a minute.  That was my neighbor’s super booming stereo.  The base was so loud it was incredible. Were they angry with the noise from my glass exhaust fans and playing the music in revenge?  It was scary loud and upsetting.  I didn’t think my fans were that noisy at all.    I told my kids about it, and they assured me any noise I was making was not that bad and as long as it was not happening at disturbing hours of the day, I had a right to make some noise.   Fortunately, whoever was booming music that day never did it again.  Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about being “boom boom attacked” any more.     

I fully opened the building up during glassblowing to exit heat.  The four windows and two sets of double doors made a big difference.   The shop stayed cooler longer and it was nice to be able to get lots of air while working.   A few sessions in it was a breezy day, and it became very windy.  The big double doors on the shop opened out.      The wind just whipped them around like pieces of paper.   Boy was that horrible.   I propped them best I could at the time.   After that day I put stakes into the ground and eyelets in the doors and used bungee cords to secure the doors in place while open.   That solved my wind problem.

This is how it goes when you haven’t done something before.    Each problem that comes along needs a solution.  A few more sessions in, and it was a rainy day.    After all, it is Oregon and it rains from September to April seemingly without end.   There are dry days here and there, and even dry weeks, but the rain sticks around.      

For some reason I hadn’t thought about the rain.    With both sets of double doors open, the rain came into the shop a couple of feet.  It came inside more when the wind gusted.    Fortunately my first rainy glassblowing session was during a light rain.    I came up with a simple rain solution.    With the double doors opened up, I decided to open them a bit less, and I used a piece of plastic patio roof sheeting to sit between and on top of both open doors to form sort of an entry way patio.     I drilled the roofing panels and used bungee cords to hold the panels in place to the doors.    I could pop my rain covers on any time it was rainy, so problem solved!   

My favorite time to blow is when it is only 30 or 40 degrees outside.    In those temperatures the heat from the glass equipment is actually comforting.   I don’t even break a sweat because ventilating with such cool outside air makes the shop totally perfect for glassblowing.        

Cold temperatures are great, but too much of a good thing is bad.  I did not insulate the shop under the assumption that it would heat up and hot air would need to be vented whether it was insulated or not.  This assumption was true, but the lack of insulation was a mistake.  In the hot summer days, the shop is overly hot and uncomfortable to be in.  When we had a week of twenty degree weather, I discovered my wooden glassblowing tools had frozen in their water bucket inside my shop!  It was kind of funny to see that, but the extreme temperatures put my glassblowing on hold for several days because of my lack of insulation.  I will be adding insulation to the shop when I can afford it and when I can find the time to install it.

I still have to watch the outside temperatures, but the new shop is better in this regard.  I can blow glass comfortably in the backyard shop any time the outside temperature is 80 degrees or lower.  I prefer not to be sweaty during blowing.  Glassblowing in the warmer part of the season becomes very hot and sweaty.  It’s nice to be able to take a few months off from glassblowing.     I give myself permission to take a break each year for summer, and it’s just too hot to blow then anyway.   

With the shop in my backyard, the worry about burning down a building is mostly gone.   It has 100 amp service, which is more power than my equipment requires.   The electrical system is so much better.  During glassblowing season, the crucible kiln furnace is still on at idle temperature of 1400+ degrees 24 hours a day, just as before.  I check on it a few times a day.   Even on days when I am not glassblowing I will open the shop and make sure the furnace is holding at the correct temperature, and that the relay clicking on and off is doing so with nice clean clicks.    Any buzzing during the click means the relay could fail.  If the clicking is good and the temperature is good, then I am theoretically good for the day.  I recently added a baby monitoring camera, so I can check the equipment remotely from my phone.

On the days when I want to blow, I will usually wander out to the shop very shortly after I wake up in the morning and set the kiln temperature to 2080 blowing temperature.    It takes about 2 hours to reach that temperature.   In those two hours I have breakfast and do my morning chores.    I will usually blow glass from 10am to 2pm.    A half day blowing session is very typical for me.    For the all the part-time job juggling that I do half day sessions work for me.

My typical glassblowing attire is capri jeans, long sleeve cotton shirts, and closed-toed shoes.  Long hair gets tied back.  Each glassblowing session requires this style of clothing as part of the safety measures.   It would seem counter-intuitive to wear long sleeves when standing in front of the glory hole.   The equipment is so hot if you get too close it can actually singe the hairs on your hand or arm.   The long sleeves help reflect the heat of the equipment.  Barren arms do not make you feel cooler, as you will feel all the heat directly on your skin.

What I like about glassblowing is the focus.   Keep on center and keep on balance.    It requires a great deal of focused attention.   You can’t be lazy about anything or the piece will quickly go wonky on you.  It is challenging.  It is much more difficult than I thought it would be.  I feel I am fairly coordinated and able to juggle for example.    Somehow many of my pieces seem to end up with a slight lean to them when they are done.   You roll the glass on the blowpipe rails with one hand.   The other hand squeezes the jacks and keeps them vertical and perpendicular to the piece.  It’s almost like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time.   It is not always easy.  

The focus is a good thing.   The focus can help you forget the hectic day to day stuff.   At least you forget for a short while as you are immersed in the intensity of the glassblowing.   Then it is back to the real world.

Moods will affect how you feel about glassblowing.  Sometimes a glassblowing session is pure joy and feels fantastic.   Other times it can feel like drudgery.   If you are making pieces that are not enjoyable to make, then take those out of your product line!   For example I have a hard time getting ornaments to come out completely round, and the thinness of them causes a high failure rate for me.   I find them frustrating and prefer to make icicle twist ornaments instead.   If you are feeling lousy on a particular day, skip the glassblowing session.   If something is bothering you that will affect your focus, the session will not be a good one.

Glassblowing is all about heat management and control.     The gather of glass from the furnace is gooey and runny.  The rate that you spin the blowpipe will keep the glass centered.    The glass will want to control you.  It will want to drip when you don’t want.    It will become stiff at the wrong time.    It will fall off the blowpipe if the blowpipe was not hot enough.    The piece will crash off of the punty if your punty was the wrong temperature or if you don’t reheat the punty.   It will blow out crooked if your bubble has thinner walls on one side or if the bubble was not centered.  All of this takes time to learn.    You have to learn how to manage the glass and gain control.   You have to learn how to get the piece back to center.  How to control and get the shape you want.   The glass is near liquid one moment, and solid seconds later.  It is a fascinating but challenging media.     

I have been blowing for a while and I have gained much more control over the glass.   I do tend to repeat my mistakes or bad habits, of which I have a few.

The top edge of my pieces can be too thick which makes the rim of the piece difficult to finish well. The solution to this is to take more care on the starter bubble to begin with so the top walls are not so thick. My other bad habit is puntying.  If you don’t apply the punty exactly in the center, the piece that was fabulous on the blowpipe is now off-center and prone to ruination on the punty rod.     

I do solo glassblowing working alone without assistants.  There are no teams of people like is shown on TV sometimes, and so every step must be mastered.  I don’t like having a piece drop off my punty.  If that occurs, it can fall on the floor and break or it can fall into the glory hole and utterly meltdown.  A punty that is too small or too cold might cause a piece to fall off.  For fear of losing pieces, I overcompensate and make the punty too large and too hot, which makes it very secure. 

There is a downside to my secure punties.  When the piece is done, the punty often will not pop off cleanly and is stuck on for good.  My habit of secure punties creates more of a need for cutting and grinding.   You have to remove that punty button somehow.  If it does not pop off it will need to be cut or ground off.  Many times I also need to do a bit of grinding to get a piece to sit flat.  Anything done to the piece when completed is referred to as cold working.     

One time in glass class I was working on a piece and it popped off the punty and fell to the floor.   “Go get it”, the teachers’ assistant yelled.   “Huh?  What do you mean?” I asked.  I just assumed the piece was ruined and there was nothing that could be done.  “Go get a punty and pick it up off of the floor.  HURRY.”   Wow, there’s an idea.   I ran, got a new punty rod and a fast tiny gather of glass and stuck the punty rod onto that piece while it sat on the floor.   I successfully saved the piece that day.  Whenever that happens I call it a “floor vase”.   

I learned a very important lesson that day; do not give up on a piece.   If the top edge is rough, trim it.  If the piece is going crooked, straighten it.  If it falls to the floor, pick it up.  If the shape turns out wrong, change the design and make something else.   I have had many pieces where the glass started going differently than I had planned, and I made the piece into something else.  Often that ‘something else’ is a happy accident. The changes made on the fly sometimes come out better than what was intended.    Of course the mistake can be so bad that you have to scrap the piece.   But don’t give up before you have to.   

When working alone the hardest mistakes to overcome are the repetitive ones.    There is no one to help you overcome the point or the move at which you could get stuck.     Over time the difficult areas tend to become fewer and fewer from experience and lessons learned from trial and error.  

After blowing, I replace the glass used during the session and refill the crucible furnace.    How do you put glass into a furnace operating at over 2000 degrees?    My solution was to create a large glass ladle.   I purchased a small shovel and used a hacksaw to remove the shovel head.     Where the shovel head was, I attached a small stainless steel pot.    It is secured with a screw and with an automotive hose clamp.   Now when the crucible furnace lid is opened, the super-sized ladle allows me to add two pounds of glass at a time at a safe distance.  I reach the ladle into the center of the crucible and rotate it to dump the load of glass.   

The annealing kiln must be turned on at the start of each session.  It heats right up to 900 degrees in about ten minutes.    I have the annealing kiln sit idle at this ‘set’ temperature during glassblowing.    The kiln controller has a ‘set temperature’ function that allows it to do this.    Pieces are added one by one after completion to the annealing kiln.   Using the heat resistant gloves, each piece is placed into the 900 degree kiln.   As you put the pieces away of course it is very hot.   It feels similar to opening an oven to test cupcakes with a toothpick to see if they are done.   The heat in your face feels like that.   It’s a bit worse of course.

Once glassblowing is completed and all the finished pieces have been placed in the annealing kiln, the annealing cycle is started.    Pressing the right sequence of buttons on the kiln controller starts the process.   Annealing temperature for my spectrum 96 blowing glass is 921 degrees.    The annealing program slowly increases the kiln temperature and holds it, and then decreases little by little overnight to stabilize the glass. 

The next morning is inspection time.  Open the kiln and see how you did.  Glassblowing provides a feeling of accomplishment.   I really enjoy seeing something that was just basically nothing the day before.    My favorite part is signing the finished piece with my engraver.   It makes me feel like an artist. 

Locating the shop to my backyard did help me a lot with time management.  I closed the gallery one extra day per week.   This allowed me to blow fairly regularly about 3 days a week.   I have been working and blowing glass in my back yard now for three years.

Let’s do some math……Glassblowing 3 days per week equals 12 sessions per month.   Creating six or seven pieces per session is about 80 pieces a month.     October to April is 7 months….  Allowing for some failed pieces… That is about 500 pieces altogether.   That is a lot more work than I had created in prior years.      

Suddenly I am realizing finding glassblowing shop time is not as much of an issue any longer.     The bigger issue is now is how do I sell?   I was making pieces and they were beginning to stack up.   I actually had some inventory for the first time.

I needed to sell to help pay for the expensive glass shop and equipment and materials and supplies.   I am not really blowing to create a stockpile of glass.    I am glassblowing so that other people can have that “wow, look at that” sense of wonder and joy that I know.   I hope to bring a tiny glimmer of happiness to people through my art. 

What will sell and what won’t sell?   What about pricing?    It was time for me to figure out more from the selling side, and to put in more selling effort.  

Chapter 16 – Glass Cold Working

Cold working is cutting, grinding, and polishing.  Cold working is no fun.  There is no joy in it as it is mostly very tedious work.  

During blowing season I would be excited about something that I had made and would bring it to the gallery.  When I showed it to my bookkeeper tenant his response was always the same.   “You can’t sell it until it’s done.”

I was showing pieces that had just finished annealing.    Most of my pieces had a punty button of glass stuck to the bottom of them.    They are not actually ‘done’ until the punty is removed and the bottom is sanded and polished.    My tenant was right.   Until they are done they go into the ‘work in process’ pile and are not sellable.    

I have a smaller shed in my back yard which I set up as the punty cutting room.   When power was installed to the hot shop, we also trenched and ran power to the small shed.  It has lights and a few electrical outlets.   

To cut glass, running water is required as lubrication for the diamond cutting bits.   I set up a tray that drains into a 5 gallon bucket of water.      A small fountain pump delivers water to a tiny piece of tubing that I direct to the area that I am cutting.  I use a diamond cutoff wheel on a hand dremel to remove the puntys.    It only takes a few minutes to cut each one off.      I try to cut puntys daily during blowing season so punty work doesn’t pile up on me.  

Some pieces never leave the punty cutting room.   Sometimes I will have pieces that I look at and decide that for whatever reason, the piece just did not work.    I don’t want to cut a punty or put any more cold working effort into a failed piece.   The marginal pieces will sit in my punty cutting room until I decide whether I want to finish them or not.   I finish the pieces I am most happy with first.   

After punty removal, I bring the pieces into my house and set them on my kitchen counter for inspection.   Most pieces will have a slight lean to them, or there is still a rough punty area to smooth out.     I will mark the pieces with a piece of tape to indicate the direction I need to correct for.    Then they go into my garage onto shelves awaiting grinding and polishing.     

This is how the glass takes over my house.  Blow them.  Bring them into the house to examine for cracks and evaluate.   Take them back to the small shop for punty removal.   Back to the house to see if they sit flat.   Move them to the garage onto shelving to await grinding and polishing.    Take back to the house for photos to list them online.   Then to storage racks.  I have a space set up for pieces listed on ebay and another space for etsy glass.    Some pieces will go to the gallery sales floor.   I don’t have a very good work flow.   It’s all over the place and disorganized.  Glass work in process takes a lot of space.  If you can, build a giant shop that can handle all of the work in process and inventory needs.   

I have an Inland 3- In-One Swap Top Lapidary Machine.   It comes with 3 different tops and will serve as a flat lap, a glass cutting saw, and a glass edge grinder.   I rarely use the saw or the grinder.  I use the flat lap function the most for grinding and polishing the bottoms.  Cold working is a tedious job, and there are a lot of steps.    I use a 150 or 240 grit for rough grinding.  I can then switch to 400 or 600 fine grit.   I check to make sure the piece will sit flat.  If there is any wobble, it is first corrected.   I then progress to 1200 or 2400 super fine grit and then a polishing pad.      The same piece gets punty removal and then 4 or 5 gridding and polishing steps.  It can’t be done in one easy step.  A glassblowing goal for myself is to become better at puntys so they separate better, then I will have less cold working to do.  

Glassblowing is instant gratification.  Take the gather, blow, work it, and there it is you made a work of art fairly quickly.  Cold working is the opposite, as it is slow and steady.   The cold working process is a chore!  It takes storage space until pieces can be completed.  It is a necessary evil.   I had a coastal gallery owner walk into my art gallery one day and I showed him one of my pieces.   It was in 2010 when I was very new.   He turned it over and looked at the bottom and said “Not quite right for my gallery.”     I didn’t realize the bottom made a difference.  After that I have been trying to get a really nice flat and polished bottom on my pieces.

Inland Swap Top Machine – Set up as a flat lap grinder

Chapter 17 – Monthly Cost of Glassblowing

Before building the glassblowing shop, I had absolutely no idea what it might do to my electric bill.   There is zero cost information out there, or at least I could not locate any.   A beginning glassblowing book that I read said glass blowing takes “lots of money, bunches of it,” which is extremely vague at best.  How much is bunches of money?

I plunged into this blindly as there was no coach, no guidebook, and no outline.   Glass class did not cover any of that.   I will tell you about the costs and expenses.   It makes my accountant heart happy to spell it out for you and take the mystery out of it.    It is very helpful to have another means of monthly financial support while learning glass skills as it is very expensive.     

With the kiln turned off, my electric bill for my house is right at about $75 per month. This is my base electric bill. While running the crucible kiln 24 hours per day, the electric bill jumps to $225.     The increase in the cost is about $150 per month in electricity to keep the glass shop running.    98% of it is for my crucible kiln which is 35 amps and holds 80 pounds of glass.    If you buy a smaller furnace kiln, your electric bill should be smaller.   A larger kiln would require more electricity.   The monthly electric is high, but I did expect a high bill.   

One day I had a technician from the electric company come knocking on my front door.    “Ma’am, we would like to replace your electric meter for you” he said.   “Your power might be off for a day.”   He said it was behaving erratically and usually when they do that they are worn out.  Apparently the meter reader was perplexed by my electrical meter and reported it to their office.       

The crucible kiln cycles on and off.   It is not pulling power every second.   It has a controller that senses a slight temperature drop and the power cycles ‘on’ to heat the glass.  The controller cycles to off when the temperature exceeds the holding point.  Cycling on and off is how the kiln maintains its set temperature within slight fluctuations.  Because it draws a high amount of current it makes the meter run fast during the on cycle.    Normal home appliances run at ten to fifteen amps or even much less.    35 Amps for the kiln is a lot.   The kiln cycling to on makes the meter go fast for a few seconds, and then the meter slows to normal as the kiln cycles to off.  The meter goes fast for a few seconds, and then it slows to normal.   It happens over and over all day and night long. I can see why the power company thought it was broken.      

I told him “please do not replace my electrical meter, it is working just fine.”   I explained I did a lot of ceramics and had a kiln running that was cycling on and off.     I figured most people can relate to a pottery kiln better.  I didn’t want to have to try and explain what a glass crucible furnace kiln was.     I asked him to please note that on my account that there is a kiln that will run frequently and there is no problem with the electric meter.      He was fine with my explanation but was a bit surprised that my meter was not broken.      He said “OK.   We have never seen that before.”    It’s like I said to start with.  Who makes a glass shop in their back yard?   It’s pretty rare.  I believe I am the only glassblower with offhand glassblowing equipment in my county.   I have searched online and have not found any others in my county yet. 

My regular expenses for glassblowing besides electricity are glass cullet and propane (or gas if you had a gas glory hole). Glass cullet is special glass made just for glassblowing.   It is a sturdier and clearer glass.   You can’t just toss any old glass into the glass crucible furnace.  It would sure make things cheaper if you could do that.   It’s not that easy.    Different glass is made with different formulas and has different COE.    COE is coefficient of expansion.   Bottle glass or window glass or borosilicate glass all expand and contract differently (referred to as COE).    Attempting to mix random glass would cause an unstable finished piece.   The differing COE of the different glass will cause the piece to crack.    Care must be taken to use the same COE glass in the furnace and for the colored glass (‘Frit’) that is applied.    The cullet is available in fifty pound bags or buckets.  It looks like ice cubes.  The cost of my COE 96 blowing glass is $72 for fifty pounds plus delivery, or about $100 for fifty pounds.   The glass cost of any piece is pretty easy to figure out.  Just put it on a scale.   The cost of the blowing glass is $2 per pound.  Most of my pieces are smaller.    I estimate my glass has about $1 per piece in glass cost in them.

My propane glory hole is a beast.   It uses almost a gallon of fuel per hour.   I have a two five gallon tanks and an eight gallon tank.    The tanks are never 100% full due to the design of them.   The normal “fill” for a five gallon tank is about four gallons.   My equipment grows cold as the tanks empty and the pressure becomes weak. I am typically left with a gallon in each tank (that is useless for glassblowing) when I need a fill.    My usual three tank propane fill is about 13 gallons or $40.     The price normally fluctuates around $3 per gallon. 

My glassblowing sessions average three to four hours at a time.    I have never blown glass for a solid eight hour day.    I can go four and sometimes five of these half day sessions before needing a fill.   My pace was three glassblowing sessions per week.   At this pace I fill my propane tanks three times a month.    Sometimes it is weekly.    I am spending $120 to $150 per month on propane.     The cost is just about the same as the electrical cost to run the crucible kiln.      Because of the extreme high glassblowing temperatures, a big part of the cost of glassblowing is the energy costs.   

Electricity, propane, and glass cullet are the normal continually recurring glassblowing expenses.    In addition to that there are many incidental expenses.   The incidental expenses are: colored stringer, rods, frit, foils, silver nitrate, dichroic glass, colored sheet glass, plaster, cement, refractory cement, glue, polish, parts and hardware (yard art), bails (jewelry parts), wire, pearl powder, beeswax, hand torch fuel, kiln wash, thin fire paper, fiber blanket.

The list goes on and on.   The incidentals you purchase will depend on the design and effect you are going for.   Some parts and pieces are for continual shop maintenance and upgrades.  Other purchases are incidental expenses for your glass.     I will typically spend $500-$600 per blowing season on incidental expenses.

The total operating costs for my setup, working part time on average are:

$150 per month for electricity

           Blowing from October thru May (8 Mos.)               =   $1, 200 

$130 per month for propane -     8 months              =   $1, 040

$100 per month for cullet (blowing glass)

            8 months                                                                          =     $  800             

Incidentals for the season                                          =     $  600             

This totals  $3,640 for the season or about $455 per month.      

Glassblowing is not cheap.   There is a big start up expense for shop and equipment.  Add to that $450 per month to operate part time.  Your setup may cost you more or less on a monthly basis.   More sessions would cost you more in gas and more for blowing glass.   My amounts are just estimates as I can’t know exactly how it would work for anyone else.  Hopefully these estimates will help you understand the cost of glassblowing.  I myself had nothing to go on!    

Knowing the costs also serves to give sales targets.   I know I need to sell about $3,600 of glass during the year just to break even and cover all of my expenses.

Chapter 18 – What Do You Want to Make? Or, What I Made and Why

What to make?   I didn’t really know.  I was just trying things.   It would have been better if I had a good answer to that question before I started this whole thing.  Customers will often ask “Can you give me a lesson so I can make a ________”   Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.   The average person can’t make a darned thing after a lesson or two.    Glass making is a process and progression of learning over time. As a beginner, I knew my skills would not allow me to make any piece of glass I wanted.  I had to start from square one and experiment and see what I could and could not create.  It took some trial and error along the way.  What follows below is examples of my processes and the outcome.    

Fused Glass Night Lights  I began working with glass by experimenting with castings and fusing.  I love the colors of glass with light behind it, so I wanted to try night lights.  Night lights are a good item to test glass fusing.  They are small and make for a nice small project to test how colors mix and overlap.   They are also a great way to test how different firing temperatures allow for texture or flat surfaces in the fused glass.   “Kits” are available that provide the light base and hardware to attach a square of glass that is either flat or slumped to a gentle curve.    I am not a big fan of the kits as they are expensive at $8-9 each.  The cost of the kit will drive the price of the nightlight higher.   To keep the keep price lower, I scour the nightlight aisle to find nightlights where I can remove the plastic shade part, and make a glass top instead.   It is a bit more work to disassemble nightlights and figure out my own shapes and ways to attach glass to the commercial bases.   The tradeoff for a small amount of extra work is buying nightlights for $1 to $4, keeping the material cost down.    In my first few years of glasswork I sold a lot of night lights and I still make them even today.   I have never paid for a night light kit.   It is fun to tell a buyer that the cheesy plastic piece got tossed into the trash, and the nightlight has been up-cycled with a new glass top made for it instead!

Other Fused Pieces   In addition to nightlights, I dabbled in making and slumping fused glass bowls, floor lamp shades, wall art, jewelry, and glass tops for plant stands.    I had pretty good success selling my finished fused glass pieces.  The overall process of fusing is easier than glassblowing, but the cost of special fusing glass is typically much higher.  A large lamp shade, for example, might require three 12 inch square pieces of glass to complete.   It can cost $15 or more for each sheet that size depending on the glass selected.    Large fused pieces can easily contain $30 or more just in the cost of the glass.   Fusing is interesting and fun.  The more you learn about fusing, the more you can do with it.   I enjoy making a fused piece on occasion, I just don’t find fusing all that attractive or satisfying to my soul.   My goal is creating blown glass.    

Glass Casting    In my glass class the instructor taught a side session on glass casting for any students that were interested.    I learned basic casting techniques, as well as mold making and tips on firing the finished mold in the kiln. The process of creating glass castings can be painstaking and messy. The kiln casting process involves many steps.  There are glass artists who specialize exclusively in glass casting, whereas I only do casting once in a while. I have random fun making small cast paperweights, pen and business card holders and a few small sculptural pieces.   I do some fusing and casting mostly on summertime days when it is too hot for glassblowing.   

Ornaments and Floats   Lots of glassblowers crank out gorgeous blown ornaments and floats.   I struggle in making them, I find them difficult. A good glass ornament is thin, lightweight, and colorful.  Herein lies my struggle. If the gather of glass isn’t perfect, there may be a thinner area in the starter bubble.   As the ornament is blown larger and larger, any thin wall area blows out first and will make the ornament out of round.     An ornament not blown out enough feels thick and clunky.   It is not easy to find that perfect balance between too thick vs. overblown.   Thinner ornaments will also fail at a higher rate in the kiln during the annealing stage.     I use crushed glass frit to color my pieces.   In a thin ornament colored with frit, the color tends to get weaker and weaker as the ornament gets larger.  Bottom line is I find blown ornaments rather frustrating to make.   It’s simply not worth making things that are frustrating!  I now make sun catchers that can also be used as Christmas ornaments in a pulled icicle style.   I don’t make a lot of floats. Take my advice, if it drives you crazy and makes you mad as you make it, then don’t !

Miniatures and Smalls I define a piece less than 6 inches tall as small, and miniature if it is less than 2 inches tall.  My largest pieces are 14-16 inches tall, which is not exactly large, but that is my work. Small pieces are easy and fast.  Working with the starter bubble, or the starter bubble with one gather of glass over that is simpler to work with as a beginner.  In my glass class, the instructor said working larger pieces is easier.    I found the opposite to be true.  The more layers that are added, the glass becomes thicker, things can flop out of control, and working and balancing the glass takes more practice with larger pieces.   The smaller size propane glory hole that I have produces less heat than would be ideal.   In working larger pieces, once a piece is reheated a few times it becomes less and less subject to workability.  In other words, the larger pieces cool too much and stiffen and reach a point of non-workability.   What you get in the first few working passes, the shape, thickness you have, or thinness you didn’t get, becomes more or less fixed.   Going bigger is definitely limited by my equipment, and also takes much practice to succeed at.   It became a natural fit for me to do miniatures, so small and miniature is how I roll.  It is the largest part of the body of my work. 

I believe it doesn’t have to be huge to be fabulous.  But there are definite drawbacks to working smaller.  Buyers and collectors with money and gallery owners tend to want big impressive works.   I have heard plenty of the smirk-like comments such as “everything you do is small, huh?”  It’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow, but it stems from the critics who do not know what is involved.  “Yes, I specialize in miniatures”, I respond.   Unfortunately, big size is not me. Not everyone can do giant three feet wide wall platters. It is just not realistic for me.  I would need to set up a much more professional shop with assistants.  I would need better arm strength.   A couple of pounds of glass on the end of a four foot long blow pipe will feel like 15 pounds.  I have accepted the reality of working in a smaller format.  Yes, it sucks!  I would totally love to make giant works!  If I can’t go big, the alternative is clear.  Make fabulous smaller glass!     

Paperweights I attempted a few paperweights in my very first glass session!  Paperweights do not involve any blowing.     Successive gathers of glass are taken on a punty rod.    In each layer the colors and effects are built from the inside out.  Most of my paperweights are experiments and tests.   I like to make them for variety and a change of pace.   Of course, marbles and paperweights can be your glassblowing focus.  My dichroic color twist paperweights sell very well now on ebay!   In my third year of glassblowing, another local glass artist said to me, “your paperweights are nice and round now.”  Point being that even when using a wooden shaping block, the tools can only help.   Practice and repetition make it work.   Coming up with a good design that is all your own will make your paperweights special.

Vases, Bowls, and Everything Else  I am extremely inspired by vintage glass.  I could not wait to try the classic Victorian Jack in the Pulpit shape and thread wrapped vases like Durand created in the twenties.    I practiced JIP’s and thread wraps all the time!   In between those, I experimented with different sizes and shapes and colors and decors.   A vase is a vase, and only a special touch can make it artistic and sought after. I worked at making toothpick holders, tea light vases done in a miniature floppy bowl style, shell shaped business card holders, small bowls, pen holders, and even hand blown lamps.  The possibilities seem to be unlimited.  Some of my experiments and testing instilled ideas in me that I will return to and explore further in the future.   For example, I have made hand blown starfish.  I would like to become more proficient at them, and sell them in Oregon coast galleries just an hour away from my home.  I definitely have more ideas than time to do them all.  There are  so many directions you may choose from.

Yard Art    I recently developed a yard art flower that is mounted to a slender pole for a very artistic looking backyard glass piece.   I looked online on EBAY and ETSY and could not find anything similar to mine.  They are overheated and then spun out to become a flattened cone.   It turns out they are fun to make and they also sell well.    

The Commercial Stuff   After five years of experimenting in glass, and not selling all that much, I decided to try more commercial type items.   I just recently began making more ornaments (for Christmas time – or as summer sun catchers), Pumpkins (for fall, Halloween, and Thanksgiving), and heart paperweights for Valentines.  This evolution has been a success.  My glass pumpkins are my best selling item.   I sell many ornaments each year.   I make these items now to “pay the bills” and I have to look at them as a necessary evil. Production type items are less fun as it can be a bit boring to make the same thing over and over.  

While experimentation is great fun, producing a great variety of items makes it tough to put together a product line.  It is difficult to put together a cohesive display for a sales floor, or for a gallery, or for a sales booth.  It is even tough to put together a cohesive set of jury slides.

I have done so many different things it is time for me to decide on my specialties and what my glass product line will be.   The décor and the inspiration behind it will make my glass special.    At the same time, my personal taste and likes need to be balanced by which items sell the best.  The popular appeal and sales from a good production item will go a long way to supporting the artistic side of glass blowing.   

I haven’t decided on a product line just yet. It is an ongoing adventure.  Once you progress beyond the actual glass studio setup, the challenge then becomes refining and perfecting your glass, developing a style and a product line, and achieving sales.    To me, this process is a challenge and does not come easy. 

One great solution came from a customer as I explained I was not sure what kind of pieces I should be making. He paused for a second and said, “Make what you are good at!”   Wow, I totally appreciated that input!   Others have said, “Make what will sell.” The true key is to find the balance between those two!

Chapter 19 – Wingert Gallery of Glass

Here is a fairly random selection of my glass work.   Can you tell I like variety?

Chapter 20- Decors and Finishes – Secret Tips and Techniques

After hundreds of years of glassblowing, it seems as though everything that can be done in glass has already been done.  I am not sure there are many secrets left.  Maybe other glassblowers do things exactly the same way I do?   Visiting or working in several different glassblowing studios is very useful to see how each shop goes about doing things.  There is no such thing as right or wrong or cheating in glass.  If you figure out an easier way of doing something, good for you.  Even if you don’t uncover a new way to work in glass, your glass will still be your own: Your own style, your own designs, your own hand. 

At one glass show I asked a glass artist “how did you do that” and got a blank stare and no answer back.   The artist was not willing to share at all.   I thought to myself, “Oh, brother”, as if the average person, or even the average glass artist, will copy the design or technique? Glassblowers do have distinct shapes and decors.   I don’t purposely seek to imitate or copy anyone.   The opposite is true.   I try to come up with glass that is different and unique to me.   If I copy, it is only by accident or happenstance.   At the same show, another artist explained exactly how they did a piece when asked.  I am taking the sharing approach of the second artist, rather than the tight lipped approach.   A good glass artist can pretty much figure out how a piece was made, and they could copy if they wanted to.   So feel free to use my techniques with your own designs.   I guess if you copy me, it is considered flattery right? 

While I don’t have a product line per se, my glasswork revolves around about a dozen different decors.   I typically work in crushed glass frit rather than chunks of rod.   The glass in the furnace is clear.   All color and decors are added to a clear base.  The following pieces are all ones I made, which are a good representation of my decors and styles.

Mono Decor / Sparkle Foot Style               The most common décor theme in glass in general is monotone.  Mono is a single color throughout the piece.   It will usually take several layers of frit to fill in all the clear spaces to achieve a solid color tone. This vase is in deep violet with a sparkling added organic foot.  I wanted the contrast between the deep color and the crystal foot, so I choose violet.  The clear foot was done by dipping the hot bubble directly into the furnace (several times) and manipulating from there.

Mottled A mottled décor is probably the second most common décor used in glass.  The mottled look can be with a single color or with an unlimited mix of color combinations.   This small bowl has large white frit, with smaller red/brown frit. Frit is sold presorted by size and is available down to powder. 

Duo Tone   I frequently make two tone pieces.  My yard art is almost always two-toned. My two-tone style is achieved simply by pressing the hot glass bubble into two different trays of color, one side at a time, and by flipping the bubble from side to side to side in the different trays.  Of course you can roll your bubble into three or four trays of color, or make trails or designs in cookie sheets, and apply colored frit in a limitless variety of ways. 

Thread Wrap   I love a good thread wrap.   Where the threads are applied usually creates an area of color contrast in the piece, and the threads add texture and sparkle.  This purple piece is also “squashed.”  It was pushed against the marver table on each side to flatten it to a flask type shape.

To do thread wraps, I had to create a special punty rod. My punty rods did not come with handles. They are solid metal rods so there is no way to hang them.  My fix was to glue on a plastic collar.  When a step in the process calls for the hot glass to be hung, I have a broom clip attached to a rafter for this purpose.   The collar allows the punty rod to be hung from the clip.  The solid rod is much heavier than a broom, and would slip right through the clip without the added collar stopping it.

How do you glue a plastic collar to a metal punty rod?  ‘Goop’ of course!  I use ‘goop’ for many purposes in the glass studio.  ‘Goop’ is a very sturdy silicon based glue and dries hard but with some flex.  The dried goop is like the sole of a tennis shoe.  It will bond plastic to glass, metal to glass, metal to plastic etc.  I love its versatility.   It is my go to studio solution – ‘goop’ it!   If you haven’t used ‘goop’ before you are missing out!

A thread wrap can be added to piece that is still on the blowpipe.   I prefer to have a more finished piece on the punty rod before adding the thread wrap.   I place the punty rod on the rollers at the end of each of the glassblowing bench rails.   The rollers allow the  punty (or blowpipe) to be spun while remaining in place, rather than moving up and down the rails.  If you want to do wraps, add rollers to your bench.

To actually do the wrap, a hot blob of glass on a punty is simply touched to the piece on the bench rollers.   After it sticks, then it is pulled gently away while spinning the piece.  The glass will come off onto the piece in a thread.  It is fun to do.  The piece now with the thread on it must be reheated enough so the threads are fully adhered.  The threads can flake off and be a bit sharp and dangerous if the reheat did not successfully fuse them.  

Colored threads are much hard to do when blowing solo.   It takes time to add color to a small blob of glass.  Too much time and the hanging piece needs reheated.   During the reheat, the color prep goes cold and stiff.  Juggling both at the same time in the glory hole by yourself is a challenge.  My default is clear wraps!

Silver Trails   I call this décor silver trails.  It is actual silver applied to the piece (sort of). 

The glass frit in this vase is called “silver brown” and is designed to turn to a metallic finish.  The dripping trails is the applied silver.

In glass class, the instructor showed us how silver nitrate applied to a hot glass leaves residual silver behind and allows you to write or scribble on glass.   He had a quite nasty piece of chemical and was holding it in tweezers.   Silver nitrate will turn your fingers brown.   Don’t touch it.  And where do you buy a piece of silver nitrate?

My trick for this is dew docking sticks.  They are silver nitrate sticks use to stop bleeding when trimming dog’s toenails.  Technically, they are a medical item, not for public purchase, for doctor and vet offices only.  I found sellers in Canada on EBAY that will sell them to you through EBAY.  The dew docking sticks have a tiny amount of silver nitrate at the end.   The tiny amount means you may use several sticks in creating this look.  The advantage of the dew docking stick is the stick is a natural way to be able to hold the silver nitrate without tweezers.  It is much easier to draw on the piece with them, and there is no danger of touching the chemical.

I love doing the silver trails pieces.  It makes me feel like I am in kindergarten again to be able to blissfully scribble on a vase!

Threaded (Stringer) Stringer pieces are just that.  The hot bubble is rolled over stringers of glass.  Stringers are long thin rods of glass like a strand of spaghetti. Stringers may be positioned however you like.  They allow for design, texture, and color contrast in a piece.   And they can be broken and sized as you like. It is a simple but effective décor.

‘Cheater’ Cane Roll-Up     A cane rollup is an age-old Italian technique.  Traditionally, canes are heated on a metal plate type tool, and a hot disk is rolled across them at the base.   They are then pulled together into a cylinder, any gaps are closed, and the piece is transferred to a blowpipe and blown to shape.   A cane roll up typically takes special tools and the help of assistants to pull it off.   

I accomplish the same type of look on my own, with a ‘cheater’ cane roll-up.  This piece has the vertical lines and style similar to a cane roll-up.  Very simply I cut thin strips of colored glass.  They are placed on a hot plate to pre-heat them and the hot bubble is rolled over them.  Care must be taken using ‘pi’ to make sure the width of the row of glass strips is 3.14 times as wide as the bubble width so there are no gaps.  This is an example of finding an easier way to achieve a piece that normally has a high degree of difficulty.

Color ‘Blocks’ – This vase has pastel blocks of color worked into it.   This décor again is very simple.  More random cut pieces of glass are applied in the same manner as the cheater cane roll-up.   The pieces are pre-heated on a hot plate and the hot bubble is rolled over them.   As an artist, this technique allows pieces of glass to be applied to a vase in any color or shapes combinations that you desire.    The hot plate is my best friend!

Metallic   This is a medieval style wine goblet with a metallic finish.  Metallic décor can be achieved easily with special frit.   Certain glass frits are designed to ‘reduce’ or flash to metallic upon reheat.   I have found that it is similar to producing raku pottery in that the flash to metallic occurs on a temperature reduction.    It is easy with my glory hole to slow down the fan speed and to turn down the gas flow to reduce the temperature of the glory hole.  It can be a bit tricky to get the flash effect to occur.  It happens in a narrow temperature range.  

A temperature reduction of a piece may also be achieved by using a newspaper to cool it, or by allowing the piece to cool outside the glory hole and re-introducing it at the right time.

Applied Décor:  Hearts, Stars, and Floral   My personal favorite decors to do are hearts and vines, night stars, and floral.    The secret trick here is the design elements – little glass hearts, glass stars, and glass flowers are done from small molds and are baked and fused ahead of time.  It takes some planning and advance fusing work.   But it is not difficult and you look like a glassblowing genius when you can come up with a wonderful design in glass.   These small design elements are easily added to the hot bubble with the same technique of preheating them on the hot plate and rolling your hot glass bubble over them to apply to your piece.

I made my own stars and hearts molds.   The flowers were done from a commercial plate slumping texture mold.   Sometimes I fuse freehand cut flowers, but either way it is a slick technique.

Party Décor   Sparkling bits of scrap dichroic glass and random stringers is my party décor.  It reminds me of  confetti and streamers!  The party décor makes for a fun piece of glass and is a good way to use up tiny bits of scrap glass that might otherwise go to waste.

Optic Ribs   Just plunge your hot bubble into an optic mold and you have an instant ribbed effect for your ladybug tooth pick holder.  Optic molds for creating ribs are essential for making pumpkins, and they can be used for ornaments and many other pieces.   It is a very nice look and extremely simple to do.

The decors and styles you create is what glassblowing is all about!  It’s about creating designs that you enjoy, that you love, and hope others will love as well.  The best feeling is when your work is admired and appreciated and  evokes a positive response!

Chapter 21 - Top Edge Treatments

The top edge is a super critical design element, as it catches the viewer’s eye first.  I like to play with the leading edge and see what fun ideas I can come up with.   The edge of course, is manipulated while the piece is pliable and hot.  Here are some examples of my top edge treatments:

This vase has a symmetrically crimped top edge.  It was done by slipping the nearly completed vase into the top end of an optic mold.

This vase has a cut and folded back top edge.  The rim is cut all around with metal shears and then gently folded back as the top is re-heated.

This is an example of a stretched bud vase.   In the stretching process, the vase is heated and shaken in a downward motion on the blow pipe to stretch the neck longer.    The top edge was left alone after stretching, creating a very organic slightly flared look.

Here is a vase that was opened up at the jack line.   I kept opening further and further until the opening had a wide nearly flat rim.

This is a floral style edge.  It is basically grabbing and pulling with a twist in several places along the rim.

Another floral style top edge.  This one is much more symmetrical rather than organic.

This stylistic floral top was from pressing into an optic mold, and then pulling each point.

In this medieval style goblet, the edge is highly pulled on opposite sides to give a handle like look.

Another floral style pulled top edge.   Floral style top edges can look really nice and “make” the piece. This vase is all about the floral top.

In my hearts and vines vases, I like to do a heart shaped top edge.   To make the heart shape, I push in on the back and pull out the front edge with a metal spatula.  

In this simple plain top edge, I added a pearl look to the rim.  The nearly finished piece is pressed into glass pearl powder that is in a stainless steel bowl.  The piece is heated until the pearl powder fuses to the glass.

This piece has a pulled and rolled top edge.   Picture fingers on a hand.   The top edge is pulled several times in several places to form fingers rising from the rim.   Then each finger is bent and rolled over to achieve this look.

The crimped edge of this cobalt vase was done by pressing in four places with glassblowing tweezers.

The main design of this vase is the sparkling foot.  The top edge can simply be left straight when you wish to emphasize other design elements.

Pulling up in one spot creates a teardrop look.

Now that you have seen a few of mine, how many top edge treatments can you come up with?

Chapter 22 – Epic Failures ….Beginner Glassblowing Mistakes

This may be the only glass book you will find discussing failure as it is hazardous to discuss it.  Who wants to admit failure and show it to the world?  Failures will occur more as a beginning glassblower.  There will be less and less failures over time as you progress in the media.   I mention failure as part of what to expect in learning.

I once approached an art gallery about doing a show that would highlight the difficulty of glass as a media. In other words, display failed pieces; explain why the pieces failed; explain the unique challenges of working in glass.  Of course, as part of the display, accomplished pieces would also be displayed.   My proposal was sort of like shooting myself in the foot. They didn’t “get” it, and opted not to do the show.

My point is that the canvas of a painting won’t crack on you the day after you add a paint stroke.    I believe I could do a painting right now, without any training.   It may not be a good painting, but I could do one.  As you hammer out a pair of earrings, the sheet metal will not suddenly collapse on you.  There is a high difficulty with glass as a media that must be learned.  Physical glass working must be learned or there can be no art expressed in glass.

Failure is inevitable in glassblowing, especially as you learn.    Expect failure.  Don’t worry about it.  Just try again.   And respect the glassblower.  It is not as easy as they make it look!   I do still experience an occasional failed piece.  All glassblowers will!  Here are select examples of failed pieces along the way and why they happened.  

THE MIGHTY LADYBUG

Notice how the powerful ladybug caused the top rim of this vase to crack!

I had the idea to make a leafy looking vase with a ladybug on the rim.   I put a red bead of glass on a hot plate to pre-warm it.   Any bits of glass added to a hot bubble will stick better if they are heated.    The flattened rim of the vase in progress is then pushed into the ladybug bit of glass.     I thought this piece was fine, but it cracked a couple days after removing it from the kiln.   The hot glass vase is about 1500 degrees and the pre-heated lady bug was about 600 degrees, that is almost 1000 degree temperature differential.  The cold spot created by the added glass bit caused the crack.    After this happened, I realized that I did not sufficiently heat the area where the ladybug was applied to fix the temperature difference.  Failures are teaching points.  Failures require analysis and problem solving, so I had to change how I was making a ladybug vase.  Now, after sticking the red glass bit to the hot vase, I use my hand torch and focus on heating the ladybug until it glows.   Once the ladybug is heated to about the same temperature as the rest of the vase, the cold spot is no longer there and the finished pieces no longer crack at the bug.    

WHACK-A-STEM

WHACK.  Ok what just happened?  I can’t exactly remember how, but I whacked the stem of a pumpkin and broke it right off.  I figure going forward I will let my customers break the piece after they buy it.  If I break them myself before they go out the door, then I will never get anywhere.   Breaking your own work is the ultimate failure!   It is glass after all.  Handle with care.

IT’S A MELTDOWN

Here is a jack in the pulpit vase shown next to one that had a meltdown.  This actually was not a glassblowing mistake.  In the annealing stage, the controller failed and the kiln over fired.  Rather than annealing the pieces in the kiln at 920 degrees, the kiln decided to go rogue and rose to over 1600 degrees.   The too high temperature flattened all the pieces in the kiln at the time flat as a pancake.   I was glad I caught the over-fire in progress and was able to shut the kiln off and get the controller replaced without causing a fire or any other damage.

Failure will happen.  Sometimes it will be your mistake.  It can also occur from the equipment failing on you.

THE BUBBLE IS LOST

This was going to be a white floral vase.   It is now a solid rod of glass.

I placed floral bits of glass on the hotplate and rolled my hot bubble over them.   Yay!  The floral effect applied easily!    But wait something was wrong.  I blew and blew and nothing.

Reheat.  I made another attempt to blow, and blew even harder, and still nothing.  After a few tries I realized I lost the bubble.   Inside the piece the starter bubble had collapsed as I rolled it over the floral bits.    It became pointless to attempt to blow out the piece as the starter bubble was totally gone.    

It is harder as a beginner to work with opaque colors as you cannot see what is going on in the center of the piece as you work it.    As you begin glassblowing, it is best to stick with clear colors for the first year or two.  I learned from this piece to make sure the starter bubble is pretty firm before it is covered in a new layer of glass.  Letting the starter bubble cool a bit longer than normal will help prevent it from collapsing when doing a roll up design type piece.

RIMMED TO PIECES  

Oh Lovely.  That is about all you can say when the kiln is opened and you find the piece shattered.  In this instance the rim of this yard art piece broke because it could not handle the stress.   I have found that the rim can shatter for three different reasons.

1)     The rim was too uneven.     In overheating the piece and spinning it out, it becomes thinner and thinner as it gets larger.   If there was any thinner area in the bubble wall, the spun out piece can be uneven.  It may be thicker on one side and thinner on the other.  Or it may have a thin spot on the rim.  Just the unevenness can be enough to create differing cool down rates.    This creates stress and strain and a failed piece.

2)     Heat errors.   Working the piece too long and focusing so much effort on the rim area can cause too much of a heat difference from the rim of the piece to the back of the piece.  The rim is often much hotter than the rest of the piece as it is typically the last part worked.  Glassblowing is all about heat control.  When to heat the bottom.  When to heat the top.  Flashing the piece.  Heat errors will cause shattered pieces like this.

3)     Cool spots.   Perhaps in shaping the flower, I wanted it to lean this way or that, and grabbed and pulled with my tweezers or pushed it against the glassblowing bench board.    Any time you touch a piece in any way you are cooling it or making a cool spot.    If the piece is not correctly flashed, or not reheated enough, the cool spot can remain and cause the piece to fail.   Just put in your 10,000 hours of practice and you can figure all of this stuff out, no problem!  

THE COLLAPSE

I succeeded in rolling the hot bubble over some black and white bits and was on my way to making a funky vase.   Suddenly in the middle of working the piece, it simply collapsed upon itself.     While a piece is on the blowpipe, small collapses can be fixed by blowing into the blowpipe.   The glass bubble behaves like a balloon and can be re-inflated.   But once a piece is transferred to a punty rod, it can no longer be easily re-inflated.   If a collapse occurs on the punty rod, the piece is ruined.     I should have cooled the side walls of the piece more as I was working it.  That would have prevented the collapse. 

UN-ANNEALING

Glass pieces are cooled down slowly in the kiln over night, and sometimes longer.  This is known as annealing.  Glass cooled too quickly will crack.  There are annealing charts and guidelines available.   After having several paperweights shatter on me, I fixed the problem by consulting the charts and adjusting to longer annealing times.   I rarely make annealing errors any more.  The technical aspects of glass do become glaringly evident when a failed piece results!   

INCOMPATIBLE

This piece was strictly experimental and I expected it to fail.

Different types of glass expand and contract at different rates.   This is called the coefficient of expansion, or COE of the glass.   Borosilicate (pyrex) is tough and has a COE 104.    Fusing glass is typically COE 90.   Most blowing glass is COE 96.   You can’t put any old glass into the glass furnace, or you will have unstable glass.   Even colors, crushed glass, and pieces added during glassblowing should be of the same COE as the glass in the furnace.  

I thought it would be cool to put a Murano glass candy into the center of a paperweight.   I knew the candy was COE 104 and would most likely crack the piece, but I wanted to try it.  I read all about compatibility of glass and this was a test.  Sure enough it failed. 

Point is if you KNOW that you have glass with differing COE, do not try to use them together.  Only use compatible glass, or failure of the piece is almost guaranteed.    

CONTROL FREAK

This is an early attempt at a Jack in the pulpit vase.  Just about everything went wrong.   I lost control of the piece.   The foot was uneven and too small, the stem was thin and the piece flopped all over, resulting in a twisted stem, and the rim was so uneven I grabbed and twisted the top to try to do something with it.  The piece almost looks ok, but it was a freaky loss of control!  The skill of glassblowing is learning to control the glass, and not letting the glass control you.

BLOW OUT

A thin spot in the side wall of this pumpkin caused it to blow out in that spot, ruining the piece.  Care and evenness in glass working, in all stages, prevents mistakes like this.  In a production item like a pumpkin, trying to make them over and over as fast as you can you will have a bad one here and there. 

I look at all the mistakes I made (and make) as teaching moments.  It is more true than in jest to say I have gone to the glass “school of trial and error.” It is a tough but effective way to learn.   

Chapter 23 – Selling at Small Local Events

Having had a slow art gallery actually impeded my knowledge about my own art.  I don’t know what my best sellers are and what my price points should be.    Any knowledge that could have been gained over time from sales experiences felt limited because of very light foot traffic.  When you only have a few customers a week, and even fewer sales, my gallery sales experience has been too minimal and random to be useful to help me.    

I decided I must go where the people are.   There are events happening in the area just about every week of the year.   The problem has been participating in an event (Corvallis Downtown Market on Saturdays for example), would mean shutting down the gallery to do so.   My first few years in business, I wasn’t willing or ready to choose to do that.   Over time, the gallery has gotten to the point where it is so slow I prefer to opt for the events.   I cut the gallery hours down.  Being closed too much, matters little now as the proverbial nail is already in the gallery coffin.   It is already virtually bankrupt.    Doing events will now only help and not hurt.       

For my first event I tried the Alsea Women’s festival.  That was an eye opening experience.    First of all, to do events, a pop-up canopy tent is needed.  I also purchased some very nice white plastic tables.     My setup for this first event was basically the tent and the tables.  Alsea is out of town in the country about 20 miles.   I had a girlfriend in the building next to mine that would pop in just about weekly (for a year !) and rant and rave about how wonderful the women’s festival was and how I JUST HAD to participate (it was her event).   If you listen to the baloney enough it seems to make sense.  Besides, I had never done any selling events, so I was excited just to try one.   It didn’t sound like a good event for art, but feeling pressured I finally said yes.   

The event was in a nice garden setting out in the countryside.    The setting was extremely nice.   There were 40 or 50 vendors all with booths.    The problem was there was no crowd.     There were only trickles of people wandering by throughout the day.   After a while I realized the trickle of people was folks from the other vendor booths.  There were actually more vendors in attendance than any visitors!!   Talk about a sales disaster.  It was completely pointless to be there.  Then it started raining and became chilly and made it miserable for the remainder of the day.

At about lunch time the event leader called all the vendors together for a “presentation.”   It was less presentation and more witchcraft.  I mean seriously. She had some weird person direct everyone to send their energy into the ground and visualize it projecting from there into all the earth.  I stood there in shock pretending to participate and slinked back to my booth after the bizarre chanting ended.  Most of the booths were holistic in nature and featured products like natural weight loss, aromatherapy, and natural foods.  I was out of place like a fish out of water.  It was not an art event in any way shape or form.  Yes, I knew that going into it, but I did expect some foot traffic might make up for it.  I was wrong.  No one came to the event with art in mind.  It was the worst event I have ever done or ever will do.    At a minimum I expected foot traffic and there wasn’t any.  There was new age voodoo instead.  They should have just rented a big meeting hall and passed out cards to one another.  It was more of a network meeting for new age holistically interested types than it was sales oriented.  Afterward, I felt really stupid that I had participated.   I was badgered and suckered into that one.

I tried some other local Philomath events because they were easy and close by.  The Philomath Sunday Market was one of them.   The name is sort of a rip off of another local event, the Corvallis Saturday Market.  The Saturday market on the waterfront in Corvallis teems with people every Saturday morning in the dry part of the year.    The Philomath Sunday Market only came on 3 weekends in July.   It turns out it was some kids’ senior project.  Being such, there were only 8 or 9 vendors and the publicity for the event was non-existent.     Some parents and teachers from the school came by to support it, and I ended up with a few sales.    I participated because it was only a few blocks away from the gallery.  The handful of small sales was not worth feeling trapped in a tent most of the day.  As with my Alsea event, there was zero foot traffic to speak of.  No internet, no computer, only hot baking sun.   

I tried the Philomath Street Party that was literally put on 2 doors down from my building.   They shut down a couple of blocks for it.   Again, I tried it because it was so close and easy to try.  The street party featured a live band, a bounce house for the children, and food booths.  I probably had the only art booth, and it was not an art event.  The crowd bought food, listened to the band, and they walked by my booth without really looking at it.       What was wrong with this town?   No one in Philomath has any interest in glass?   Again, no one came to that event with art in mind.   The organizers running these events all tell you how great their event is.   But, I was beginning to get the picture that I should pass on participating unless it was an “art” oriented event.

What about a craft event ?  I tried the Philomath Elementary Holiday Craft Fair.  It was put on by the Philomath Frolic, a large rodeo that was in town once a year, so there was some publicity.    I had also attended in the past and my impression at that time was the attendance was fairly good.  It was another event that was close by, easy to do, with an inexpensive vendor fee.   I do have to say that it turned out to be a toss-up between the Philomath Craft Fair and the Alsea Women’s Festival as to which was the worst event experience I’d had.  At the Philomath Craft Fair the vendor tables lined the hallway of the elementary school.   The cafeteria had a circle of vendor tables in the center, and vendor tables all around the room.  The gym was filled with vendor booths.   Something was different though this year.    All the vendors were saying the foot traffic was much worse than last year.   As it turned out, one student in the school had committed suicide, and a large part of the school was in attendance at her funeral.    I did not realize the event was so heavily connected to the school.   This really cut down the attendance.  There was little support and foot traffic beyond school families.      

In addition to the disaster that shrank the crowd, my table was situated such that as people entered the cafeteria it was the very last table on the way out.   It turned out to be the worst possible table that I could have been assigned to.   As folks made their way around the room and found things to buy, they were mostly out of funds when they reached my table at the end of the line. Families with children rushed past my table.  “KEEP BACK FROM THAT GLASS”, many of the parents would scold their kids.  The elementary school setting meant that most of the customers were not a fit for my glass items.  It was easy to see these were not the right customers for my glass.     

Then there was the bus driver.  She had the table just before mine.    Folks would make their way around the room, see the bus driver who they knew very well, and just about everyone would stop and yak-yak-yak it up with the bus driver.    She had also bought commercially made glass craft ornaments and hand painted them.  Her ornament paintings were very well done, but many were copyrighted subject matter such as Mickey Mouse, The Tasmanian Devil, Disney princesses and the like.     I asked her how much time she had taken to make each one.   She said she spent twenty to thirty hours painting each ornament.  All that time to make them and she was selling them for twenty dollars!!    It was sheer torture to watch her sell out because folks were buying the hand painted ornaments from their bus driver friend.    Then they walked right past my glass display.  Because the local events were failures, I promised myself after that event to never ever do a tiny local event in Philomath ever again.

Be very careful on the events you choose.  Choose events that work well with your products.  Small events may be bad news if you have a specialized product. The more specialized your products are, the more foot traffic you will need to achieve sales.    

Chapter 24 – Selling at Regional Events

As you can see with my first attempts at event sales, they can be a really big flop.   I asked one glass artist,who I saw selling at several different events, “How do you make money at selling glass”?    I thought her answer was just horrifying.   She said, “you make money $5 at a time!”

She had a lot of inexpensive coasters and small fused glass items like soap holders.  Yikes, $5 at a time? Another glass artist who actively participated in events told me what sells at events is items at $20 and under. I guess there are not that many serious glass collectors like me out there.  If I want to make money at events, it seems I need to make more inexpensive things that will appeal to a mass market instead.   I should create popular items rather than art glass vases.   Going forward I am focusing more on this type of production work.

Event buyers are largely buying on impulse.  I should have figured this out sooner.  I didn’t listen at first to the low price point advice, and I signed up for some larger events to test them out.   Maybe I would find that great event where my artistic line of vases sells well.    I figured you don’t know until you try.   

I reserved a display in the group booth at the 2012 Oregon Glass Gallery, Gathering of the Guilds in Portland Convention Center.  That was another eye opening event in a different way.  It was basically glass overload.   There were 50 different glass artists showing their work at the event.    I felt very intimidated as many of the artists had been working for ten, fifteen, or even twenty years.   Some of their glass was so good, that my glass could not compete.  The group booth provided a means of participating in the three day show without having to be there all three days.  A group of artists shared a larger booth space and we worked shifts.   It was sort of pricey at about $160 fee for a 2 foot by 4 foot display area within the group booth.  I thought my display was merchandised adequately, but there was so much glass on display it was like my glass was lost in an ocean.    I only sold one piece in the three day event.  My first regional show was good experience, but it was a big loss.   I skipped the event the following year.  Two years later, in 2014, I felt I was more prepared for it.    I upgraded my display by using pedestals, and the quality of my work had greatly improved.   I was hopeful that I could make it work the second time around.

At the 2014 OGG event, I sold a dozen pieces as compared to just the one piece two years earlier.   It was encouraging to see that I could begin to garnish sales, even in an ocean of glass.  I made the booth fee back plus some.   After parking, meals, and travel, the event was breakeven for me.   Not a loss this time, but not a money maker either.   I did see one artist sell hundreds of dollars of simple yard art.  Her price was $18.   Ah, the $20- and-under theory proved true.  That show and that “aha moment” convinced me that mass produced inexpensive pieces could achieve higher sales.  I had not been doing any production work in my first few glass seasons.   At the time, all of my items were one of a kind and I felt most of them did not deserve such a low price.   I am now doing a lot of more commercial items that I should have done all along.

OGG Display 2012

      OGG Display 2014 

My next regional event was 2013 Art and Air Festival in Albany, my home town.   The booth fee was $140 fee for a three day event, and it was local.  The festival had a popular 1970’s band playing on Saturday night, Foreigner, with 20,000 people in attendance.  My inventory at the time was still not geared to the $20 price point.  Well over half of my items were priced above that.  Three straight long days of sitting in my tent booth made the event tough to do.  All life seems to be on hold while you sit in a tent.

There were long periods of down time with no foot traffic which was painfully boring.  The Art and Air event at the busy periods had great foot traffic, though it seemed to me the Art and Air crowd was more interested in the concert than art. 

At events, be prepared for people giving you lots of compliments.  I find that to be just a courtesy.    It’s retail speak similar to saying “thank you” on your way out the door from a small shop as it is more courteous and less awkward than just slinking out.  The best compliment you can receive is when the lookers turn to buyers.  They break out the wallet and spend money. Compliments don’t pay for my glass shop and equipment.   I sold over $400 in the three days.  It wasn’t fantastic, but it was just about enough to make the event worth doing.   Not bad for my first full booth event.    

I took a photo of my booth setup, which wasn’t very good, and I was not happy with it.  Seeing the booth through the camera lens provided a different perspective and magnified the flaws.  The jewelry vendor next to me recommended an art merchandising expert and said I should purchase his marketing CD.    Outside expert help on booth merchandising seemed like a really good idea, so I purchased the CD online.    

I participated in other regional events in 2014, such as Ashland 4th of July Craft Fair, and City of Gresham Arts Festival.   I had moderate success and sales, but the events were just ahead of break even.  I have not found an event where my artistic glass sells well.    

I have improved my booth merchandising and appearance.   The marketing CD also taught me better selling techniques. At the time, I knew if I changed my product mix, I could sell more.  But some of the events I had scheduled so far in advance I did not have production type pieces ready in time.   I planned the event selling season to fall into the hot season from June to September when the shop is shut down for the summer.  Most event applications are due several months in advance, so I was committed to participate in the ones I applied for with the inventory that I had.   Even if I only break even on the events, I will learn what each one is like.  It is good progress and builds my artist resume.   

The big granddaddy event in Oregon, Corvallis Fall Festival, was the regional event I was looking forward to doing for several years.  It is one of the largest art events in Oregon attracting 20-30,000 attendees and artists from around the USA. The festival is all about art, and the crowd is not there to see a concert.   It seemed like a much better environment to sell my artistic vases.  For several years, I was a Fall Festival reject.   There are about 500 artists in town and nationwide competing for 150 booth spaces.  I was rejected each year that I applied.  

Then I came across an alternative.   Just next door to the fall festival event was a church that held a craft fair on the same days and times as fall festival.  It seemed like pure genius to take advantage of Fall Festival and get all the spillover foot traffic.  The church had a similar booth fee, but without the commission that the Fall Festival charges on sales. I applied and was approved for 2013.  I was very excited, until a Japanese monsoon killed my excitement.   It rolled straight across the Pacific Ocean and made landfall in Oregon.   By then it wasn’t a monsoon anymore, but it was a rainstorm with sustained 30-40 mph winds and gusts up to 50-60 mph.    The shocking thing is a week prior to the event the ten day forecast looked great.   Then the monsoon rolled in and not even the weather channel saw that one coming.   I decided to be a no show.  I was suddenly unable to do the event I had most wanted to do. I could not risk such high winds with fragile glass.   Some brave souls did tough out participating in the first day of Corvallis Fall Festival 2013.  The weather for the second day was even worse, and the event was called off.    It was the first ever rain out of Fall Festival.    It was probably for the better any way.    I had not yet improved my booth appearance that year.     

I participated in the fall festival event in 2014.  I had secured the co-event booth at the First Christian Church.   The setup was on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, and the event is held Saturday and Sunday on the third weekend of September.  Thank goodness I came on Friday.  It was a wrestling match to get my tables to sit level.   The space I was assigned had such a slope I had to bring a box of wood back with me to put pieces under the table legs.     My normal setup takes a couple of hours and the table problem added an hour and a half of frustration.  It ended up being my best event so far, but I was jealous of the heavier foot traffic I could see across the street.   I will be applying for the actual Corvallis Fall Festival next year rather than the adjunct event.          

Event lessons learned.   You can’t control your booth assignment.   You can’t control what product or who might be next to you.   Choose your events wisely as they can be costly to participate in.   There is no guarantee you will have any sales.  The cost to participate and the audience for the events all vary.  Try to participate in events that best fit your art.  If you are selling art, stick to events that have the word “art” in them and where art is the focus.     Since adding pumpkins and ornaments and other under $20 items to my show offerings my show sales have increased!

Chapter 25 – Booth Setup and Design

Art events for me have been hit and miss.   They are still a learning experience.  I will probably participate in fewer events until they become more successful for me.  I have the investment in my booth so I will do at least a few events per year.     The investment in your booth can be a big investment, so don’t take it lightly and plan for it.   The money spent for booth setup is a long term investment and will be used many years of events.    

As I mentioned, my first larger outdoor booth sales event was Art and Air Festival.  The event had Friday and Saturday evening hours and you could stay on and sell until 10pm at night.  Because of the night hours, they recommended booth lights.   With lighting, the show required a heavy duty 100 foot long extension-cord. The cord meeting the show specifications was $50.  In addition, I bought two power strips for $15 each, seven simple clip-on lights for $8 apiece, and halogen style light bulbs for the light fixtures at $7 for each bulb.    It was nearly $200 spent just to have lighting for the one event.   

First Full Booth Setup 

My booth showcased my work mostly sitting directly on the tables.  My setup included the pop up booth, a back wall, table cloths, and stilts for the tables.    Even this simple booth attempt was not cheap.   The popup booth itself was about $120.  Four tables at $30 each cost another $120.   I bought cement blocks for weights and    PVC pipe was used for table risers.  I used clamps to secure the tables together.   I bought several plastic tubs for the glass and a rolling dolly.  All these miscellaneous items added another $150 in expense.  Including the $200 for the light system and $45 for the marketing CD’s, my booth setup cost about $600. My presentation was lacking, but I learned from the marketing CD that I did a few things right.   The tables were high at counter height, and I had great lights.   There were several other merchandising issues and problems with my booth. It had too much of a flea market feel. You could easily see everything under the tables, the cooler, empty tubs for the glass, and everything else that I brought for the setup.    I had no side walls which was a big problem for overnight.   I was too exposed and actually had to box up all the glass and take it home, and then set it all up again the next day.     The event had overnight security, but my lack of preparation and missing sidewalls left my booth hanging wide open.  My trying to get the booth situated inexpensively actually created more work in this instance.    Worst of all, I did not realize how weak my presentation was until I saw how it looked through the camera and in a photo!

The marketing expert recommended high tables.  Roger that, got that one right.    He recommended creating as many levels as you can to create visual interest and draw customers from the aisle into your booth.   He said to get items as close to eye level as possible and not just strewn on a table (oops he saw my booth?).  He had a very creative pedestal idea that I incorporated in my booth.   I created pedestals from sauna tubes.  These are cardboard tubes you purchase at the hardware depot and they nest just inside one another which made them condense down fabulously for travel.  Cutting the sauna tubes and then creating caps for the ends then painting them was not easy.  It was a lot of work to create the nesting pedestals. The overall expense for the displays was only about $40 but the work involved in making them was substantial.    

I needed side walls for overnight.  Three more of those was $35 each.   And I added table skirts to hide all of the supplies and setup gear.   I got nice table cloths at $25 each for four.   The expert recommended flooring.   I purchased a snap together anti-fatigue flooring.  Another recommendation was large size photography.   I selected a photo of myself blowing glass for an enlargement and another photo of some of my nicer vases.     The flooring and the large size photography added another $100 to the booth.   Overall the investment in my booth was $900 to $1,000.   Proper merchandising is more involved that just popping up a tent and throwing your stuff on tables.  You can do that, but it will look like a yard sale that way.    Here is a photo of my upgraded booth after the marketing recommendations and my improvement efforts.   Yes, I am happy with it now.  It now looks  more professional; like a miniature art gallery in a booth.

Booth Setup – After Implementing Merchandising Recommendations

Chapter 26 - Marketing and Selling

I can’t recall exactly how I came across this class, but a local community college offer a brief 10 week “art marketing” class.  I am inexperienced at selling me art, so I decided to enroll. 

The instructor made ceramics.  Going back nine or ten years ago she was selling $50,000 per year in art sales.  In the first classroom session, she dropped a bomb on us.  She said, “You need as much marketing time as you do time spent working in your shop”.   I found that statement profound.  No wonder my sales history was weak.  I didn’t take, make, or have the time for a strong sales effort in the past.  I spent most of my glass related time in the hot shop and very little marketing in my first few glassblowing years.  I made up my mind right then to sell, sell, sell, and to sell, or at least I would try. 

The Art Marketing Instructor was a local art authority.  Besides her past art sales history, she was the director of the Corvallis Fall Festival (yes she signed my rejection letters) and she is the executive director of The Arts Center gallery in town. Her class covered a wide variety of topics related to selling and marketing art:  

Discussion of Goals and Accomplishments

Establishing Financial and Non-Financial Goals

The self Introduction and the Artist Statement

Selling Opportunities

Galleries

Festivals

Fairs

Studio Sales

Online – Ebay and Etsy

Shows

Getting Great Photos of Your Work

Self Selected Marketing Project

Your Website

Jury Images

Pricing, Price and Inventory Lists

Budgeting and Recordkeeping

Selling with a Sales Rep

Business Cards, Brochures  & Advertising

Press Releases

Social Media

This only touches briefly on the ideas discussed.   It was a nice artist support group with teaching points.      We learned never to use “whimsical” in your artist statement because it is so over-used.    The instructor admitted it was information overload.   It was her attempt to cram everything that took her ten years to learn into a ten week class. It was truly overwhelming to consider all of the information so quickly.   There is so much marketing material that I cannot go into any of it here.

The lesson I learned from the class is that a marketing effort needs to be developed and it typically just does not happen on its own.   The belief that if your art is good it will just sell itself is not true.     There has to be a way for people to see your work, learn about it, and find it.    

With my new-found knowledge that I need a focused marketing effort, I was happy that I had filled the gallery sales floor with my own glass and had all my gallery artists remove their art.    Replacing all the gallery art with my glass had its pros and cons.   It made the gallery have more narrower appeal as now the focus was on glass only.      On the plus side, I no longer had to worry about anybody else’s art, or keeping my gallery artists happy, or accounting for and paying out artist sales.   It has enabled me to focus more on my own glass art.

One of my exiting artists picking up her work suggested I contact a gift shop owner on the Oregon Coast.    The gift shop owner liked my work and she took some pieces on consignment.    I had a few sales through her shop, but then she dropped another bomb on me.   After several months she told me, “Lauren, your work won’t sell at any price!”

Wow, what a depressing and seemingly rude statement.  Of course, I don’t believe it to be true.  Maybe she was displaying my glass poorly?  Maybe she marked it up too high?  Maybe my work really was wrong for her gift shop?   I have been listing similar items online on Ebay and Etsy and I have had pretty good selling success.   I was extremely confident the pieces I placed with her would sell.  Maybe not in her shop, but they would sell online.    I already realized from doing events that “lower dollar impulse oriented items” do better than artistic vases.  She was not really telling me anything I don’t already know.   But it felt like being told I was just making junk.  

I have to be tough.   I have to be encouraged no matter what the negative types want to say.     My glass is improving from year to year and I believe I will sell more as my work gets better and better over time.  I know I need more practice.  I am encouraged by the slow refinement I am seeing in my glass.    I believe I will discover my best sellers and create a product line that sells.   

I have examples of 9 or 10 pieces that I listed on Ebay that have sold in less than 48 hours.    I had one instance this year where I sold 5 pieces in one week on Ebay.    Maybe the national online audience is what I need to sell some of my more artistic items.    I am encouraged by my online sales so far and that gives me hope that I can do more glass and less tax work in the future.  

There is one area of marketing and promotion that I have been lax on.    I haven’t done a lot of gallery shows.   Local galleries have specific “calls to artists” for work for shows.   There are opportunities to exhibit in city halls, libraries, airports, and businesses that like to display rotating art exhibits.   These shows and exhibits will get your name out there and create artist awareness and recognition over time.  Between the art gallery hours, tax returns at tax season, glassblowing, selling events, cold working, and my ebay cosmetics business, my participation in shows and exhibits is just a bit more than I can handle.    I am also now trying to list and sell glass online.    My participation in gallery shows has been ‘slim to none’.   I would like to step up my efforts here and do more shows and exhibits, and I will do so as I can.   It would greatly improve my artist resume.   For now, I am choosing to do selling events and selling online instead of shows and exhibits.  Due to my own over busy schedule I choose sales over accolades, praise, and resume building.  

I talk more and more about glass and my mother seems to be quite worried by this.  Yes, the “starving artist” stereotype is largely true.  I am trying to increase my glass marketing efforts slowly without disrupting my other businesses!   

Examples of Some of the ‘Junk’ that “won’t sell at any price”

Chapter 27 – Selling Online

One obvious way to increase my selling effort was to try online marketplaces like Amazon, Ebay and ETSY.  But will they work for my artist hand-made glass?   Which one will work better?  Before internet shopping arrived you had to actually visit physical brick and mortar stores.   Now anything you may want is available right on your computer, showing up at your doorstep wrapped in bubble wrap with a few clicks of your computer mouse or cell phone button.  The problem is trying to sell generic studio made art glass with no recognizable brand name.  

Ebay has several formats for listings.  You may do an auction, where buyers start with low bids and compete with one another hoping to be the lowest bidder for an item.   Ebay made the online auction commonplace.  Their auctions typically run for a week.  Ebay is lesser known for their “buy now” listings.   Many artists are not aware that you don’t have to do competitive auctions.   I am sure a lot of artists avoid Ebay because of fear of auctions.   What if your art sells for only the lowest opening bid?  Auctions are risky if the opening price is too low.  If your opening auction price is too high, you may not have any interest and no bids.   With no bids your item goes unsold and you are out the cost of the Ebay listing fee.  You can easily be out fees for unsold items as Ebay is swamped with millions of listings.   Ebay does offer an alternative to auctions. You can choose to place your item in your own Ebay store and name the fixed price that you want.   I too am afraid of auctions.   Folks might bid like crazy for a Tiffany art glass vase, but they won’t bid for a random Sneak Peek Glass vase.  Yes fame and brand name matters on Ebay.  Because I have no fame or name recognition, I use only the ‘store’ format and avoid auctions.

With the store format I can list my glass in my Ebay store for a nickel per item on Ebay.  On ETSY listings run about 20 or 30 cents.  While ETSY listing fees are higher, they do not have any monthly fee.   Ebay may charge $19 or higher per month for their store maintenance fee, depending on the store level you select (basic, advanced etc.)   Overall, establishing an Ebay or ETSY store is very easy and I can list many items for about $30 per month on Ebay and for much less on ETSY.   The downside to the stores is auctions get priority in all the searches and stores take a back seat.  Stores have a much lower search exposure.    The closing fee on a sale is higher with a store sale than on an auction sale.   I have found the combined listing fees, closing fee, and paypal fees will run about 15% when selling on Ebay and about half of that selling on ETSY.    The fees themselves though are well worth it.  Using the online marketplaces gives me a national audience for my glass and millions of built in customers.    In comparison galleries and shops are strictly local and can charge 40-50% fees and commissions.

The store format is also used exclusively by the ETSY marketplace.   ETSY started as a crafters handmade marketplace, but recently opened the floodgate to allow collectibles and mass produced items that fall within their guidelines.  There is less difference between the two than there used to be, but ETSY is still better known for arts and crafts, but Ebay is bigger and has more users.

Which works better?  You might think ETSY would be better for artsy handmade glass.  It may be different for  other artists but my glass seems to sell better on Ebay.  I believe this is because of the glass collecting world.  Glass collectors abound for Carnival Glass, Italian Glass, Czech Glass, Early American Pressed Glass, Depression Glass, Studio Movement Glass, Mid-Century to Modern Glass, Victorian Glass, Branded Glass Like Fenton and Fostoria, and so on.  Collectors can focus on shapes such as bells, cigarette lighters, tumblers, perfume bottles, salt cellars, and glass salt and pepper shakers for instance.   Others collect by color – Ruby, Cobalt, Amethyst, Amberina, Amber.  The glass collectors have been shopping on Ebay for years and years before ETSY was even launched.  The larger number of Ebay users and the greater amount of vintage glass on Ebay makes it a better market for selling art glass than for ETSY, in my opinion.  I have experienced better sales on Ebay by about a 4 to 1 margin compared to ETSY.   I also sell cosmetics in an Ebay store.  Perhaps I am just more proficient at Ebay.

Selling on either Ebay or ETSY takes some time.  When I sell lipstick online it is much simpler.   I take a photo, do a description and post the listing.    Store listings can include multiple quantities.  In your store you can indicate ten pieces of the red lipstick are available.   Once those ten lipsticks are sold I hit the ‘relist’ button putting ten more up for sale, making it very efficient.  I can use the exact same photos of the lipstick and the description all over again with only a mouse click.   Glass listings are much harder.  To sell glass several photos from several angles are needed.    Buyers want to see the rim, the bottom, the signature, how it looks against a dark background, a light background etc.  I try to include another photo of my hand holding the piece or with a ruler next to it for size reference.   I talk about how heavy it is or feels. Sometimes I will show how it is used with some fake flowers placed in it or with pens and pencils in it.  The more photos placed in each listing, the better.  You photo skills become very important.    Bad pictures can cause you to lose the sale.    Online buyers cannot touch or feel the glass and can only see the photos you provide.  Because my glass pieces are one of a kind, a new set of photos must be taken with every piece.   It is very time consuming as I will often spend 15-20 minutes per listing.   At times it can take over an hour to list just three pieces. 

Because listings take time, my approach has been to be consistent and try to list one or two items per day.  If I am diligent and continue to list even one item per day, within a year I would have 365 items in my store!  That would be a very large task indeed.  It works much better for me to write and post listings slowly and add to my stores over time.  Think of the online sales as a marathon and not a race.   I have been able to generate $200-$400 per month with online sales.  It takes constant monitoring and continual adding of listings.   I find when I slack off and stop doing listings sales drop quickly.

How you write the description matters.  You have to write a great description of your piece and be sure to describe any flaws down to small details.  You will receive negative feedback if you leave out information about flaws. I like to talk about my passion for glass and how I am an artist that built a glass studio in my back yard.  I talk about how glass is durable and can be appreciated and enjoyed for a long time.  The buyer can feel more connected to you as an artist if there is a story.  Part of what they are buying is the story.  “I got this on ebay from an artist that does her glassblowing in her back yard!”  If the piece connects in any way to an area of glass collecting, then you will get interest from those collectors.    “This piece is in a rich cobalt blue.”   “This piece is thread wrapped similar to Durand pieces made in the 1920’s.”    Or, “I love the metallic finish in this piece as it reminds me of Tiffany Favrille glass.”    Pull in glass collectors doing listing text searches whenever you can!

Be consistent.  Be diligent.   Your online sales can be a big part of your sales efforts.

Chapter 28 – Product Photography

Any attempt at an online presence makes your photography critically important.  Great photos are necessary for gallery and show applications, web and social media postings, and for any online sales venues.   I will try to keep this chapter brief, but photography is something you are pretty much forced to learn as part of being an artist.   

I used to work at a commercial photography studio in California.  The studios there were large commercial spaces and they have built in cycloramas.  Cycloramas are large curved surfaces connecting the wall to the floor.   The purpose of the cyclorama is to fool the camera.  Cameras only see in a one-dimensional manner.  Taking a photo with a cyclorama in the background fools the camera and makes the horizon line disappear.  This results in a super clean photograph minimizing distractions, which is exactly what you need for your glass photos. 

To improve my photos, I made my own small product photography cyclorama.  I came up with an inexpensive solution that will yield a great photo equivalent to a light box or light tent that.

The backdrop is the key element of how a cyclorama works.   For $6.00 , the cost of a large roll of freezer paper, you can create a pretty effective backdrop.  Freezer paper is good because it has both a dull side and a shiny side (each providing a different photographic effect) and you can roll out long sections for taller pieces.   I use it all the time to make a cyclorama backdrop.   

The idea is to get the optimum uncluttered background to best show off the item you are selling.  You do not want distracting curtains, tablecloth pattern, furniture, or any other items to show in the background of your photo.  Added clutter makes objects harder to see.  Use of a cyclorama eliminates all of the clutter. It even eliminates the horizon line for a beautiful photo studio effect, allowing the ultimate focus on the item you are selling.    Here is how a home-made cyclorama is done: 

Start by taping standard white paper to a box to cover any designs or colors.  Leave four or five inches of overhang off the bottom. 

Then stand up the box and let the overhang gently flow forward to form the cyclorama.  Put the box up against a wall, or put something heavy in the bottom of the box so it won’t tip over. 

Then, attach your backdrop to the box.  I have attached it with an office type clip.   After attaching your backdrop let it flow and adjust the slack in the paper so there is a nice rounded edge in the back.  This becomes the curved surface that fools the camera and gives your item the professional photo studio “no horizon line” look to it.   Your backdrop will fool the camera best when the curve at the back looks like this.

Next, I took a photo of a very sparkly vase, sitting on this backdrop, using just the available light.

Use of the backdrop, set up in this manner, provides a completely uncluttered focus on your item.  In most cases some cropping and color correction is needed.

Here is a good photo, better than the average photos on EBAY or ETSY, and this was accomplished without any special lighting.  It’s all about the backdrop.  Your photos will be even better with the proper lighting.

The reflective side of the freezer paper helps light your items.  If you are getting too much glare, you can flip to the dull side.  You can collect and use a variety of colored paper for backdrops; wrapping paper, shelf paper, construction paper, and fabrics.  Collect paper and cloth of different colors for your photography use.  Test and experiment with different colors.   Avoid prints for the background as they create too much visual clutter.

Try using contrasting colors as they can sometimes work better than black or white.  For example, use a light blue backdrop for a yellow or gold vase.  I recommend starting with a white backdrop.  White will generally work with most items.  To keep the focus on your item, uncluttered viewing is the key.

Using a Backdrop for taller items  By “not” using a photo light tent, the advantage is you are not limited to the size of a particular tent.  Just tape your backdrop the wall for taller items.  Simply use a longer or wider backdrop, and adjust the position of your lamps.

Here is a photo I took of an art glass lamp taken with diffused lighting and a tall sheet of paper for a backdrop:

Of course I sold this lamp for hundreds of dollars on eBay !!  

For lighting I use a couple inexpensive desk lamps that I purchased at the local department store for $12 each.  Home Depot sells clamp type utility lights for $7 each. I did not buy any expensive photography equipment for use with my table top setup.   

I fitted my lamps with “true color” type 100 watt bulbs.  These are standard household bulbs available in any store.  You can experiment with LED style lighting etc.  With some trial and error, you can get bulbs that work best with your particular camera.  The lamps you use can make a big difference in your photos.  Be sure your camera has the ability to color correct for various lighting types. After you set up a cyclorama backdrop, and add lighting, then add light diffusion and you are all set! 

Light diffusing materials are everywhere.  You can be creative and use cloth, paper, and plastic items (trimmed down milk carton?).  CAUTION: Be sure your diffusing material does NOT come into direct contact with your hot lamps!!

Here is an example of a setup using translucent panels from a ‘storage cube’.  Another example might be cloth panels held with embroidery rings.  Or try a cut down plastic milk carton.  You may already have lamps and diffusing materials that will work without spending any money at all.

Digital camera selection is extremely important.  While lighting and backdrop can be created inexpensively, the quality of the photo is ultimately dependent upon the quality of the camera you have selected to use.  If your photos are not coming out well, consider investing in a better quality digital camera.  I switched from a $150 basic digital camera to a camera that cost about $325.  The switch was well worth it in the results.

Features your digital camera must have to get the best results from your cyclorama setup.      

Built in flash – most photography using a cyclorama is intended to be done without a flash using exterior diffused lighting instead.  Diffused lighting provides softer lighting – flash lighting creates shadows and can be harsh.  But, sometimes a flash will help, sometimes not.  It all depends upon the item you are shooting.  Try with and without a flash for varying results.  You should notice an immediate improvement in your photos from using diffused lighting on your items.  

Manual Setting – for the best results your digital camera should have a “manual” setting mode.   Manual settings will allow you to adjust the aperture (the lens opening size) and the shutter speeds.  With diffused lighting, the available light will be lower.  You will need to adjust for the low light level.  I often shoot with shutter speeds of less than 1/30th of a second (use a tripod to stabilize).  You must have the ability to fully control the camera. 

Exposure compensation – Better cameras will have light exposure compensation settings.  These are very helpful.  With the exposure compensation set to “incandescent” the camera corrects for the yellowness that normally occurs when shooting under normal household light bulbs.  The “fluorescent” setting removes the blue tint that can occur when shooting under fluorescent lighting.  The exposure compensation is an important feature to be able to get a nice white background in your photos without any dim yellow or blue haze to your image.  Alternatively, software such as Google’s Picasa will perform most of your basic color corrections and other functions after the photos are loaded to your computer.

Focus - Nothing will hurt your image faster than an out of focus photo.   A macro setting allows for sharp focus at close distances.  For instance, to depict the artist signature on the base of a vase, or the close up detail of enameling on a vase, a macro setting is essential.  You must have clear focus in your photos, especially for close-ups. 

Photo manipulating software- most cameras come with photo software to manipulate your photos.   Or you can use an aftermarket product like Google’s Picasa, which does a very good job and is available for free.  I don’t advocate any manipulation that changes the appearance of an item (deepening or lightening or changing the color for example).  Your online photos should be accurate, and color accurate, or you can be subject to returns for items that are “not as described” or “not as depicted”.

Some ability to manipulate is essential.    Most photos should fill the available frame with your item, and will need to be cropped.  Often with a diffused low light setup, you may need to bring up the brightness or the contrast on a shot.  Do not over manipulate.  The object must look in the photo the same as it will look when the buyer receives it.  The best photos are crisp, clear, well lit, honest photos. 

Photo Examples

Lighting from the sides without any type of diffusion makes distracting double shadows.

When the subject does not fill the frame, it is harder to see.  Be sure to crop as needed.

The horizon line can be distracting.  Use a cyclorama backdrop.

Don’t forget to color correct.  The color will not be accurate if this step is missed.

Here is the goal….Uncluttered focus on your art!!!!

Another great photo.  

Chapter 29 - What’s Next?

What now?   As you can see glassblowing gets very complicated.  If you have an interest in setting up a glass studio, be sure to take many lessons first to be sure you like it and that it is for you before you proceed.   It cannot be taken lightly.  It takes passion for glass.    It takes space for a studio, cold-working, work in process, and inventory.   It takes a big commitment in both time and money.   It is expensive to start up and costs several hundred dollars per month to maintain.  It takes a can-do attitude and many hours of practice.    It takes much effort in selling and marketing and learning the trade.  Becoming a selling glass artist is not easy.  As they say, if it was easy, everyone would do it. 

What is the end to my story?  There isn’t one.  I am working toward developing a product line, better marketing plans, and making glass an income producing activity rather than just an expensive hobby.   

There is a proverb that says “life is but a vapor, that appears for a while then vanishes away.”   It is so true.  As you age the years fly by at a seemingly faster pace.  ‘Poof’ and your life vapor is gone.  Since that is clearly the case, I want to try to make something of the glassblowing that I love.

That leads me back to the voice.  How do you define a “great glassblower”?  Some of my pieces are pretty great.   In a very small way I am already there.  I do think that a great glassblower could support him or herself with their art.   So that is my goal and that is what comes next.  There is no ending, but there is my continuing to work toward that goal.   I feel now that my first several years working in glass was all just groundwork.  I see my work improving.  I feel my glass career is really just beginning now.

No matter if the glass absorbs all of the time that it can take from you.

No matter that the fun glassblowing part is only a small piece of the glass effort needed.

No matter that the payback is slim right now. 

No matter that the gallery and events have been failures.

No matter that the space requirements tend to take over my whole house.

No matter that I have to balance art with the work that pays the bills.

No matter that juggling four part time jobs makes it difficult to focus.  

No matter that I have so much to learn about the business of art.  

No matter that I have thousands of hours to go to become proficient.

I will keep at it - because I believe.   The notion that I am “lucky” to be an “artist” so I can focus on my craft is long way from being true.  Maybe someday I will get there.   I am working on it.    

APPENDIX A – Start Up Costs

Glassblowing is an expensive undertaking.  This is a record of my costs.  This is what I paid in the year 2011.

I believe my startup is about as low cost as you can get.  I scrounged the thrift stores and put things together on the cheap.  Many of my equipment items were fabricated.   Your prices might be a lot higher.   Things change as money becomes more worthless.   The $20 bill is the new five!   Maybe my list can help you plan or budget. This is my complete list of expenditures.    Count all your costs before you begin:

HOT SHOP BUILDING COSTS

SITE PREPARATION

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Electric Chainsaw

Tree Removal

$

  50

Knife River 6 Tons of Gravel

Foundation

$

130

Sunbelt Rentals–Skid Steer Loader

Rental Equipment to Move the Gravel

$

220

Tuff Shed -site leveling fee

Leveling Up charge

$

200

City Building Dept

City Permit Fee and Plan Check

$

442

Total SITE PREPARATION

$

1,042

BUILDING - CONSTRUCTION

16 BY 20 FOOT BARN STYLE

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Tuff Shed

Base Building Cost

$

7,829

Tuff Shed

Upgrade for Painting

$

   739

Tuff Shed

Upgrade for Windows (4)

$

    660

Tuff Shed

Upgrade for Turbine Vents (2)

$

    188

Tuff Shed

Upgrade for Gable Vents (2)

$

    100

Tuff Shed

Upgrade for Loft 2nd Floor

$

    398

Tuff Shed

Upgrade for 6 foot double doors (2) sets

$

    500

Total CONSTRUCTION

$

10,414

BUILDING - FINISH WORK

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Home Depot

Electrical Parts, Panel, Wire, Electrical Materials

$

1,813

Electrician Labor Fee

Design/ Install 100AMP Electrical Service

$

1,850

Home Depot

Gutters and Downspouts per City Requirement

$

   160

Home Depot

Lumber for Loft Ladder / Hardware

$

     48

Home Depot

Florescent Light Fixtures (3)and  Motion Light

$

     85

Wall Mart

Window Curtains (4 sets)

$

     44

Home Depot  - Cement Board

Fireproof flooring (20 pieces) +hardware/Screws/Mortar

$

   320

Home Depot – Rope

Create Loft net style “wall” for safety

$

    35

Total FINISH WORK

  4,355

GRAND TOTAL – GLASSBLOWING BUILDING COST

$

15,811

GLASSBLOWING EQUIPMENT COSTS

PIPE WARMER (fabricated)

ITEM

PURPOSE

$

COST

TOTAL

   Duct Metal Sheeting

Oven Skin

$

     20

   Kiln Bricks

Oven Walls

$

   216

   Barbeque Cast Iron Burner

Burner

$

     20

   Propane Orifice (ebay)

Fixed pressure regulation

$

      6

  Oven Racks from Thrift Store

Oven and Blowpipe Stand

$

     16

  Propane Tank -

5 Gallon (1)

$

     30

  Propane Regulator

Variable gas flow

$

     20

  Zip Ties/ Strapping/ Misc      Hardware

Oven Assembly

$

     25

Blowpipes (3 small/ 1 Larger)

From CR LOO

$

   480

Punty Rods (6)

From CR LOO

$

   440

Total PIPE WARMER Station

$

1,273

CRUCIBLE KILN FURNACE

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Crucible Kiln  35Amp 220V

50 pound Crucible Capacity

$

1,110

Ceramic Crucible

Hold Molten Glass

$

    280

Blowpipe Stand

Wood Roller Stand $25 Plus Bearings and Hardware

$

      40

Barbeque Tongs / Hose clamp

Lid Handle Extension

$

        8

Pulley / Cables/ Cable hardware

Counterbalance System

$

      20

Fiber Blanket

Reduce Ambient Lid Heat

$

      40

Full Length Closet Mirror

To Watch Bubble Formation

$

      20

Total CRUCIBLE KILN Station

$

  1,518

MARVER (fabricated)

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Marver Table

Glass working surface  (Dad Fabricated)

$

300

Optic Molds

Give a ribbed effect to glass (3)

$

311

Frit Bowl / Stainless Steel Bowls

Hold crushed glass for pickup

$

   70

Hot Plate

Preheat Blown Glass design elements

$

   30

Polished marble tiles (4)

For Flattening and rolling glass

$

   40

$

Total MARVER Station

$

  751

GLORY HOLE & Exhaust

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Sundance Art Glass

Fiber Glory Hole

$

1,210

Glory Hole Stand

Fabricated from a rabbit cage

$

        0

Propane Tank -

5 Gallon (1)

$

      30

Propane Tank

8 Gallon (1)

$

      65

Propane Regulator

Adjustable to 10 PSI

$

      27

Battery Backup

Backup Power Supply

$

      80

Blowpipe Stand

Wood Roller Stand $25 Plus Bearings and Hardware

$

      40

Dimmer Switch

To Adjust Glory hole fan speed

$

        9

Duct metal Sheeting

For some Heat Shields

$

      20

Belt Driven Exhaust Fan

Heat Exit System (thrift store)

$

      65

8 inch Ducting / Connectors/Tape

Various Ducting Hardware

$

      90

Exhaust Hoods

Ventilation Hoods (2) thrift store

$

      60

Exhaust Hood skirting

Duct metal Sheeting

$

      90

Total GLORY HOLE Station

$

       1,786

PIPE COOLER (fabricated)

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Plastic Kitchen Trash Can

Pipe Cooler body / water vessel

$

  12

Medium Fountain Pump

Water recirculation

$

  30

Metal Strapping / Hardware

Blowpipe Rest

$

  18

PVC Pipe / Elbows (4) / caps (2)

Plumbing for water jets

$

  15

Plug in On/Off toggle switch

Easy on/off

$

    6

Plumbing Goop

Glue

$

    5 

$

Total PIPE COOLER Station

$

     86

GLASSBLOWING BENCH (fabricated)

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Glassblowing Bench

Working Bench (Dad Fabricated)

$

   300

Wooden Glassblowing Blocks

Glass Shaping Sundance

$

   177

Glassblowing Jacks (2)

Glass Shaping Tool

$

   290

Glasblowing Tweezers

Glass grabbing Tool

$

   115

Picks and Diamond Shears

Glass Manipulation/ Cutting

$

   120

Cherry Wood Paddles (3)

Glass Flattening

$

     90

Metal Water Buckets (2)

Water Supply / Soak Wood Tools

$

     40

Torch

Spot Heating Glass

$

     50

Steam Stick

Tool for slight post transfer expansion

$

     40

Taffetas

Wooden Jacks

$

     40

Total BENCH Station

$

  1,262

ANNEALING KILN

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

AIM Kilns 220v 25amp 36in round

Annealing and Fusing

$

1,110

Fireproof Gloves and covers

CR LOO – Needed to pick up HOT glass

$

   150

Duffle Bag

For counterbalance sand

$

       9

Baking Tray with vermiculite

For Knock off Box

$

      15

Pulley / Cables/ Cable hardware

Counterbalance System

$

      20

Butter Knives

Punty removal

$

        6

$

Total ANNEALING KILN Station

$

  1,310

MISC & SAFETY EQUIPMENT

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Fire Extinguisher

Emergency Fire Suppression

$

  25

Large Display Shop Thermometer

(2) for environmental monitoring

$

  20

LARGE Shop Circulation Fan

Air Stream

$

120

Various Shop Fans

(4) Box Style Fans

$

100  

Attic Exhaust Fan

Vent Ambient Air

$

  90

Kelvar Sleeves/ Eyewear

Safety Clothing

$

150

Broom Dustpan Shop Vac

Dust Removal

$

120

Misc Stuff

Bungees, Shelf Brackets, Wood, Storage tubs

$

200

Total MISC

$

  825

COLD WORKING EQUIPMENT

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

Swap Top 3 in One Flat Lap

Grinding, Cutting, Polishing

$

325

Swap Top Grinder

Grinding Base (2nd station)

$

140

Dremel Hand Tool (2)

Cutting/Finish Work/ Punty Removal

$

124

Dremel Diamond Bits

Finish Work

$

  45

Flat Lap Diamond Discs (12)

Various Grit Size Grinding Discs

$

220

Hand Engraver

Signing Glass

$

  20

Cutting Station – Tray and Pump

Water Circulation work station

$

  45

Total COLD WORKING

$

919

EQUIPMENT RECAP

ITEM

PURPOSE

COST

TOTAL

PIPE WARMER STATION

$

1,273

FURNCE STATION

$

1,518

MARVER STATION

$

    751

GLORY HOLE STATION

$

1,786

PIPE COOLER STATION

$

      86

GLASSBLOWERS BENCH STATION

$

1,262   

ANNEALER STATION

$

1,310

MISC EQUIPMENT

$

  825

COLDWORKING EQUIPMENT

$

  919

Total EQUIPMENT

$

  9,730

Total – GLASSBLOWING BUILDING COST

$

15,811

Grand Total START UP COST

$

25,541

APPENDIX B – Backyard Hot Shop Layout

My shop work floor is comfortable to work in.  My 16 foot by 16 foot area is about the minimum you would want.

APPENDIX C – Artist Resume

      Lauren Wingert

    Sneak Peek Glass

Sneak Peek Glass  - Artist Statement / Artist Resume

Shops & Galleries

Gallery Calapooia

Albany OR      2015 – Current

Red Rhinestone Boutique

Albany OR    2016 – current

Guentners Gardens

Salem OR  2016 – Current

Ashland Artisans Emporium

Ashland OR              2014 to 2016

Gifted – Artisans Gift Shop

Depot Bay OR              2012 – 2015 (shop closed)             

Gateway Gallery

Philomath OR              2009 to 2015 (gallery closed)

Online Ebay / Etsy stores

Search for ‘Sneak Peek Glass’             

Sneakpeekglass.com

Shows

Art & Wine in the Garden

Garland Nursery, Corvallis OR

June 2016

Nature (depicted in glass)

River Gallery

Independence OR    March 2016

Glass Act

La Sells Gallery at OSU

Oregon State University, OR

2015

All Creatures Big and Small              

Glatt House Gallery Woodburn OR 

October 2014

Albany Holiday Bazaar             

Albany Fairgrounds OR             

December 2014, 2015, 2016

Holiday Show -Oregon Handmade at OSU

Oregon State University, OR

December  2015, 2016

First Christian Craft Fair 

Fall Festival Event-Corvallis OR               

Sept 2014

Portland Justice Center – Glass Display

Portland Oregon

May 2014

Art & Air Festival

Albany OR             

August 2013. 2014, 2015, 2016

Ashland 4th of July Craft Fair             

Ashland OR             

July 2014, 2015

Gresham Arts Festival (featured artist)             

Gresham OR             

July 2014

Philomath Frolic Craft Fair

Philomath OR             

Nov 2013

Glass Gallery –Oregon Glass Guild  

Portland Convention Center              

May 2012, 2014

Wingert Glass Sculptures chosen

As awards for Celebrate Corvallis event

Jan 2010

Connected by Glass Show

La Sells OSU Gallery             

Dec 2010

Local Glass Artists Display             

Corvallis Arts Center  (at Footwise)

October 2008

ArtShop Artist                           

Corvallis Arts Center                           

October 2008

Artist Statement

We have all heard that heaven has pearly gates….but the vision goes on to describe walls like precious stones and golden streets like glass.    Glass to me is a special material.  It is media used to talk about things that can only be imagined.  I see art in the media of glass as a sneak peek of things we have yet to see.

Glassblowing is very challenging and rewarding.   Working with hot glass is a fight against gravity.  The material is fluid and plastic in one moment and solid seconds later.   The shaping and guiding must be quick.  The extreme heat and fragile nature of the glass provide many chances for error.   The final result of focused effort is worth it when the finished piece emerges from the kiln.  

My glass designs will usually include a sparkling threaded wrap, a pulled top, a glass foot, or another design element to grab attention and to bring color and brightness.  

Glassblowing Experience

Glassblowing / Semester Class

– Santa Monica College

              - 2006

University of Oregon

(glassblowing seminars)

                   - 2008

1st Built Own Hot Shop

(solo blowing begun) 

              - 2009

Backyard Hot Shop

Studio Completed                               

                              - 2011              