#6 color and a story
10/03/23
Our studio consisted of two small day tanks, 2 or 3 primitive annealers, no glory hole and not much more. I’m not sure if we even had a pipe warmer. All of the work we produced was clear, if you can call JM475 marbles clear glass. Yes it was clear, very stiff and had a distinct greenish tint. The reason I bring up the color of our base blowing glass is that having only this clearish greenish glass for blowing was soon to change.
I would like to introduce you to one of the students in our class. His name is Robert (Bob) Barber. As I understand it Bob came to our class from the Physics department. Harvey found out that there was this guy, Bob, that was doing experiments with developing color in glass. Harvey went over to the physics dept. to see Bob and invited him to sign up for the glass program which he did and the caveat being that he wanted him to continue his color experiments at the glass lab.
I remember Bob as being a very quiet type of guy and one who rarely participated socially with us. As it turned out Bob picked up his glass blowing skills very quickly and became a very good glass blower. As a matter of fact years later Bob went to work as a blower for the Fenton Art Glass factory producing Art Nouveau style glass for them. But I digress.
Bob came to the glass lab and built a small pot furnace. The pot furnace had a crucible and I don’t believe it held more that 10 lbs. of glass. One of the first experiments that Bob created was to make a red glass in his pot furnace. I remember him loading the pot with marbles and some copper oxide. He told us not to touch the pot furnace for at least three days. Bob turned the burner flame to a reducing flame and let it run for three days. For those of you that don’t know what a reducing flame is, it’s when you starve the burner flame for oxygen. In ceramics it’s how red glazes are produced and it’s the same with glass. The reduced state of copper is red. The day arrived when we were to see if Bob’s color experiment would work. Well, it did work, sort of. The actual color was an opaque reddish color, a color that one can only describe as liver red but it was red and we were very excited to see what Bob had accomplished. I still have one of those pieces somewhere in a box in my attic. His next color experiment was to put silver nitrate in the pot furnace along with the marbles and let that stew for a couple of days. That produced a glass that was dark with white and yellowish streaks. It was impressive. The final experiments were with a number of the metallic oxides which produced clear colors and ended with charging our day tank with cobalt oxide. That was a mind blower as we were now able to gather and make pieces that were an intense blue. No more fighting over who would be able to use the color in the pot furnace and we did sort of fight over that small pot furnace. I should say having cobalt blue glass was exciting for a day or two but one soon tires of of blue, everything blue. All the colors Bob worked with were with our marbles we did not melt batch. Those experiments with color would come in handy when I got my position teaching at Kent State.
Bob eventually went on from Madison and worked as a technical advisor for a few factories in West Virginia as well as for the Bullseye factory in Portland, OR. Unfortunately Bob has fallen off the radar and we have not been able to find him and catch up to what he’s doing. If anyone reading this has a lead on where we can find him please let me know. Bob was an important cog in our glass education.
I could go on with fun stories of what went on in that Madison studio the year I was there. Okay I will tell one more story; about making blocks and paddles.
Remember now this is 1968-69 and the tools for blowing glass were not readily accessible. Blocks being one of them. In order to have a set of blocks we had to get a cutting of cherry wood from a farmer or someone that had a cherry tree that was recently cut down. Fortunately for us Harvey had cherry trees at his farm and he would provide the raw material for us to carve our blocks. At that time we used U shaped chisels to carve our blocks. You would lock the cherry wood block in a wood vise and spend hours using a wood mallet and chisel to hack out your block then drill a hole in the side and insert a crude handle. Our Wednesday class came and Harvey announced that he was going to demonstrate a new way to carve out a block. He announced that this new way would take no time at all to carve a block. No more hammer and chisel. We were to come to his studio and he would demonstrate his new invention. The day arrived and we piled in cars and drove to his studio. We were all there, Dan, Jim, Bernie, Audrey, Ray, Mike, Donovan, and myself. There was Harvey standing in front of his drill press with a large steel burr in the chuck and a wet piece of cherry wood on the drill press table directly underneath the steel burr. We stood there in a line as I remember it and watched with bated breath as Harvey turned on the drill press at a very high speed and lowered the burr with the expectation that the burr would just chew up that cherry wood and carve out a block in no time. Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way. As soon as the burr hit the top of the cherry wood it caught it and that block of wet cherry wood went flying at a rate of speed closely matching the rpm's of the steel burr and passing inches from our faces and slamming into the wall behind us. We stood there with terror in our eyes and frozen in place knowing someone had avoided a trip to the emergency room by inches. We all realized then that Harvey had not tested his new method of carving blocks. Well, Harvey did not miss a beat, it was as if nothing had happened. He turned and said he would now demonstrate how to sand a paddle using a flat sanding disc. Harvey had this new cherry wood paddle that had been roughly cut and now the paddle face needed to be smoothed. He had this 10 inch vertical sanding disc and would show us how to smooth the face of the paddle. As I write this I can vividly see us standing there wondering what’s going to happen now after the block fiasco. Well, it doesn’t end well. Harvey picked up the paddle and approached the now high speed sanding disc. He took the paddle and pressed it against the spinning disc and AND neglecting to keep his fingers on the back side of the paddle proceed to sand a good chunk of skin off his thumb. Blood was abundant. You could hear a pin drop. But Harvey was not one to admit defeat. He was now two for two and again not missing a beat he went and grabbed a small towel and wrapped his profusely bleeding thumb in said towel and as if nothing had happened continued to grind and flatten the paddle. Demo’s completed we all went back to our vehicles and drove back to Madison. It was a quiet ride home.
Like it was yesterday.
Bob Barber at GAS II 1972
I would like to introduce you to one of the students in our class. His name is Robert (Bob) Barber. As I understand it Bob came to our class from the Physics department. Harvey found out that there was this guy, Bob, that was doing experiments with developing color in glass. Harvey went over to the physics dept. to see Bob and invited him to sign up for the glass program which he did and the caveat being that he wanted him to continue his color experiments at the glass lab.
I remember Bob as being a very quiet type of guy and one who rarely participated socially with us. As it turned out Bob picked up his glass blowing skills very quickly and became a very good glass blower. As a matter of fact years later Bob went to work as a blower for the Fenton Art Glass factory producing Art Nouveau style glass for them. But I digress.
Bob came to the glass lab and built a small pot furnace. The pot furnace had a crucible and I don’t believe it held more that 10 lbs. of glass. One of the first experiments that Bob created was to make a red glass in his pot furnace. I remember him loading the pot with marbles and some copper oxide. He told us not to touch the pot furnace for at least three days. Bob turned the burner flame to a reducing flame and let it run for three days. For those of you that don’t know what a reducing flame is, it’s when you starve the burner flame for oxygen. In ceramics it’s how red glazes are produced and it’s the same with glass. The reduced state of copper is red. The day arrived when we were to see if Bob’s color experiment would work. Well, it did work, sort of. The actual color was an opaque reddish color, a color that one can only describe as liver red but it was red and we were very excited to see what Bob had accomplished. I still have one of those pieces somewhere in a box in my attic. His next color experiment was to put silver nitrate in the pot furnace along with the marbles and let that stew for a couple of days. That produced a glass that was dark with white and yellowish streaks. It was impressive. The final experiments were with a number of the metallic oxides which produced clear colors and ended with charging our day tank with cobalt oxide. That was a mind blower as we were now able to gather and make pieces that were an intense blue. No more fighting over who would be able to use the color in the pot furnace and we did sort of fight over that small pot furnace. I should say having cobalt blue glass was exciting for a day or two but one soon tires of of blue, everything blue. All the colors Bob worked with were with our marbles we did not melt batch. Those experiments with color would come in handy when I got my position teaching at Kent State.
Bob eventually went on from Madison and worked as a technical advisor for a few factories in West Virginia as well as for the Bullseye factory in Portland, OR. Unfortunately Bob has fallen off the radar and we have not been able to find him and catch up to what he’s doing. If anyone reading this has a lead on where we can find him please let me know. Bob was an important cog in our glass education.
I could go on with fun stories of what went on in that Madison studio the year I was there. Okay I will tell one more story; about making blocks and paddles.
Remember now this is 1968-69 and the tools for blowing glass were not readily accessible. Blocks being one of them. In order to have a set of blocks we had to get a cutting of cherry wood from a farmer or someone that had a cherry tree that was recently cut down. Fortunately for us Harvey had cherry trees at his farm and he would provide the raw material for us to carve our blocks. At that time we used U shaped chisels to carve our blocks. You would lock the cherry wood block in a wood vise and spend hours using a wood mallet and chisel to hack out your block then drill a hole in the side and insert a crude handle. Our Wednesday class came and Harvey announced that he was going to demonstrate a new way to carve out a block. He announced that this new way would take no time at all to carve a block. No more hammer and chisel. We were to come to his studio and he would demonstrate his new invention. The day arrived and we piled in cars and drove to his studio. We were all there, Dan, Jim, Bernie, Audrey, Ray, Mike, Donovan, and myself. There was Harvey standing in front of his drill press with a large steel burr in the chuck and a wet piece of cherry wood on the drill press table directly underneath the steel burr. We stood there in a line as I remember it and watched with bated breath as Harvey turned on the drill press at a very high speed and lowered the burr with the expectation that the burr would just chew up that cherry wood and carve out a block in no time. Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way. As soon as the burr hit the top of the cherry wood it caught it and that block of wet cherry wood went flying at a rate of speed closely matching the rpm's of the steel burr and passing inches from our faces and slamming into the wall behind us. We stood there with terror in our eyes and frozen in place knowing someone had avoided a trip to the emergency room by inches. We all realized then that Harvey had not tested his new method of carving blocks. Well, Harvey did not miss a beat, it was as if nothing had happened. He turned and said he would now demonstrate how to sand a paddle using a flat sanding disc. Harvey had this new cherry wood paddle that had been roughly cut and now the paddle face needed to be smoothed. He had this 10 inch vertical sanding disc and would show us how to smooth the face of the paddle. As I write this I can vividly see us standing there wondering what’s going to happen now after the block fiasco. Well, it doesn’t end well. Harvey picked up the paddle and approached the now high speed sanding disc. He took the paddle and pressed it against the spinning disc and AND neglecting to keep his fingers on the back side of the paddle proceed to sand a good chunk of skin off his thumb. Blood was abundant. You could hear a pin drop. But Harvey was not one to admit defeat. He was now two for two and again not missing a beat he went and grabbed a small towel and wrapped his profusely bleeding thumb in said towel and as if nothing had happened continued to grind and flatten the paddle. Demo’s completed we all went back to our vehicles and drove back to Madison. It was a quiet ride home.
Like it was yesterday.
Bob Barber at GAS II 1972