WHY ARTISTS SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SCIENTIFIC GLASSBLOWERS DO by Sally Prasch and Beth Hylen Artists throughout the world are using scientific glassblowing techniques in their work. Professional scientific glassblowers, artists who commission scientific glassblowers to fabricate elements, and other flameworkers incorporate scientific practices as they create their artwork. In this brief article we will introduce scientific glassmaking and touch on its history. We will hear from several artists who explain why these techniques are important to their work. We hope to challenge how you think of scientific glassblowing.
What is scientific glassblowing? At universities and throughout the glass industry, scientific glassblowers construct the elaborate apparatus often needed for laboratory experiments. From the Galileo Telescope to Newton’s prism to the compound microscope; vacuum technology to the use of pure silica to detect gravitational waves—without scientific glassblowers, major scientific breakthroughs would never have happened.
Scientific glassblowing and contemporary artistic glass seemed worlds apart for much of the 20th century, but they were not always separate. Glenn Adamson asserts that “alchemical research and other forms of early modern science made no firm distinction between artisanal and learned forms of knowledge (there was an active interchange…).” ¹ Some of the earliest lampworkers produced a wide range of products, as seen in this illustration of a lampworker published in 1769. He is surrounded by a variety of wares ranging from barometers and scientific apparatus to glass eyes, elaborate birds, figurines, flowers, and centerpieces.
apparatus. Apprentices were rigorously trained and secrets were guarded. Lampworking for other purposes developed separately and there was little communication between the two branches. This is changing. What can we learn from each other? In this article, we can cover just a few examples of the many artists who meld art with scientific techniques. To hear from artists with varied perspectives, we asked Tim Drier, Doni Hatz, Amy Lemaire, Boryana Rossa, and Sally Prasch this question: “In a few sentences, could you tell us why you chose scientific glass as a central part of your art work?” We mention a few others as well.
But gradually, skilled glassblowers were needed to build the highly specialized equipment needed for distillation, vacuum manifold systems, and extraction
Scientific glassblowers are trained to work with a variety of glasses: borosilicate, soft glasses, Vycor, quartz, and many others. Depending on the experiment, they usually start with glass tubing and use bench and hand torches to manipulate the glass into apparatus. If the glass is too large or too small to handle by hand, a glassblowing lathe is used to turn the glass. Making apparatus requires meticulously sealing glass tubes together using different techniques. Some of these seals include side, straight, ring, blind, Dieter, Dewar, and more. Many artists and pipemakers incorporate these seals, as well as the lathe, into their work today. At GAS we usually use “flameworking” or “lampworking” to describe working at the torch, but within the scientific community, flameworkers are traditionally called “scientific glassblowers.”
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CMGL 92630. An illustration of a lampworker and his wares. Courtesy of the Rakow Research Library, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. ²
GASNEWS
WINTER 2023
VOLUME 37, ISSUE 3
