by Robert A. Mickelsen
This column is the first of what I hope will become a regular series in Common Ground. It will be primarily devoted to lampworking and lampworkers and any issues that concern lampworkers. I will try to devote sections of this column to technical tips, personal notes, industry current events, and maybe even a little gossip. For much of the information I will want to include here, I will be relying on you, the reader, to keep me informed. To this end, I want to begin this first column with a request.
Please contribute! If you are a lampworker or someone who sells lampwork, I want to hear from you. Any contribution is welcome, no matter how small. Let me do the editing. Got a cool technique you just discovered... tell me about it! Found a really neat way to market your product... share it with me! Met someone you think is an incredible lampworker... give me their name! Doing an exhibition with 'High-muckamuck Gallery' in the big apple... let me spread the word! Get a lucrative commission and you want to brag... there is no better place than here! Want to say something really mean about your mother-in-law... well, maybe not here... but I won't stop you!
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Next May, the annual Glass Art Society (GAS) convention will be held in Asheville, North Carolina. If you have never been to a GAS convention, you should seriously consider attending! This is where you rub shoulders with the industry giants, get to see the latest in glass and equipment, and sit in on slide shows and lectures given by the top artists and experts in glass in the world! And schmooze! The parties are epic and the company eclectic! Best of all (shameless plug follows), Shane Fero and I are giving a lecture/slide show on contemporary lampworking. It will be called "Flameworking - A World-Wide Perspective". We are currently in the process of collecting slides from flameworkers all over the world to include in our presentation. There will also be a round- table discussion hosted by Shane called 'Flameworking - The Red-Haired Cousin', that will be dealing with the issue of lampworking's status in the glass art world. Also, Kari Russell-Pool will be participating in two of the panel discussions. Immediately after the conference, Don Niblack will be teaching a 'post-conference workshop' on lampworked goblets, venetian-style at Penland and there will be two lampworked bead making classes taught by Dinah and Patty Hulet and by Kristina Logan at A Touch of Glass in Asheville. For more information write to:
I got a call a couple of weeks ago from my friend in Austin, Rick Dodson. He told me about a new gas he was using that was a kind of hybrid form of propane. It is called 'Chemolene' and is manufactured by a company that is local to him. This gas looks and behaves exactly like propane. It burns clean, makes a nice blue highly visible flame, creates no noxious fumes, and requires the exact same bottles and regulators that normal propane uses. The big difference is that this gas burns nearly twice as hot as normal propane. Rick claims a working temperature of over 5500 F!! This is hard for me to believe but Rick swears it melts large rod so fast it is almost like working with soft glass. He swears it never boils the glass either. If these claims are true, a gas such as this could revolutionize the lampworking industry!
I checked around Melbourne and Orlando distributors and no one I talked to had ever heard of Chemolene. I also checked with other lampworkers including Paul Trautman and Shane Fero and they had never heard of it either. If any readers out there have heard of or had any experience at all with this new gas, I would very much like to hear from you about it.
It's that time of year again! No, I don't mean Christmas. I mean the winter wholesale shows: The New York Gift Show, The Buyer's Market in Philadelphia, and The Baltimore ACE Show. For many artists, yours truly included, their entire year's business and income depend on attending one or more of these three shows. I do the latter two, Philly and Baltimore. Philadelphia has the distinction of having more lampworkers than any other wholesale craft show in the country. The following lampworkers attend the Philly show: Ellie Burke, Warner Whitfield, Milon Townsend, Tim and Marco Jerman, Ann Miller, Don Jacobson, Diane and Patty Hulet, and li'l ole me. This year, we will be joined by Rick Dodson from Austin, Texas, and Bill and Laura Rasmussen from Provo Utah. Every year we have a 'lampworker's dinner' at some unfortunate restaurant in Philly. We have loads of fun, but the restaurant usually suffers at our hands. This year's dinner should be no exception!
One of the functions of this column will be to publicize exhibitions that feature lampwork in prominent galleries. Now more than ever before, lampwork is being shown as art and is attracting the attention of more sophisticated and discriminating collectors. This fall was no exception. Goblet shows were all the rage it seems and lampworkers fit right into the goblet scene. Habitat Gallery in Boca Raton held one called "The Ultimate Goblet" that featured reknowned Venetian lampworker Lucio Bubacco. The Arthur Grohe Gallery in Boston did one called "To Drink, To Honor" and included lampwork artists Sally Prasch, Brian Kerkvleit, Shane Fero, and yours truly exhibiting goblets right alongside Lino Tagliapietra's! The Owen Patrick Gallery in Philadelphia asked well-known goblet collector Barbara Boroff to curate their goblet exhibit, and she tapped Ritama Haaga, Shane Fero, and myself among others.
Goblets were not the only thing lampworkers were doing this fall. Shane Fero is having another one man show at Ariodante Gallery in New Orleans that will run from Jan. 7 to Feb. 28. Apparently he sold every piece he exhibited in last year's show so they asked him back. (Good business move if you ask me.) Habitat Gallery in Michigan is currently showing an international exhibition of lampworkers. The lineup is very impressive including Ginny Ruffner, Shane Fero, Ellie Burke, Kari Russell-Pool, Paul Stankard, Lucio Bubacco, Fred Birkhill, Hubert Stern, Heike Polster, and (I bet you are getting sick of this, right?) me! (G)
Well, that is about all I have for this first edition of 'At the Lamp'. Please send me any juicy little tidbits you have that I might spice up this space with. Until next issue...
Robert A. Mickelsen