MY LIFE AND MY FLAME – a lampworking journey through inspiration

Part 2.

Fusing Fate.

I left my Uncles business so that I could broaden my horizons. My plan was to travel around the World but this quickly failed due to my miscalculation of the distance involved. My soon to be wife and I ended up in Manchester. In my mind I had given up on glass but a visit to a local job centre persuaded me to try my luck in Oldham working for Harry Stuart at the Scientific Glassblowing Company. This was where I discovered my love for abstract sculpture, greatly helped by a surplus of short lengths of 16mm diameter borosilicate rod. Most of the work I was involved with concerned glass apparatus relating to Fisons products since the Company was an agent for Fisons. SGC was small but through Harry had important connections to Manchester University and a small range of farms nearby. The latter provided broken glassware that had been used during the process of milking cows. I along with others in the business was asked to repair the vessels wearing the appropriate PPE. This consisted of didymium spectacles but also nose clips to avoid being suffocated by the awful smell. Dried and well-aged milk being heated was a definite recipe for a big stink!

I remember one character whilst working with Harry and that was Barry the one-eyed drummer. So called as he did indeed have one eye and played the drums in a local pub at weekends. My interest in him though centred on the fact that he was an ex-neon bender and at the time I had no idea what this was. He introduced me to several techniques of writing with glass tubes. A skill I still use to this day but purely for ornamental reasons as I use 5mm rod to write people’s names. It was my job to train Barry to enable him to make the smooth transition from neon bending to working with Borosilicate. One technique I fondly recall was showing Barry how to join small diameter tubes onto larger diameter tubes at a Tee section. Best way I have found myself is to close one eye to assist with alignment which especially helps if one has quite a few tubes to fuse together. Of course, when I told Barry to close one eye, he was completely blind and almost burnt himself. It’s at times like this that a sense of humour is an important asset in the diverse World of the lamp worker.

I never did find out with Barry had a glass eye or not as I was too scared to look closely. Many years later I was to see glass eyes being made by Jost Haas at the 2017 International Festival of Glass at Stourbridge and was privileged to be presented with such an object. It was at this event that I carried out several demonstrations on making different types of scientific glassware. I often wonder what happen to Barry.

Whilst in the Oldham are I did come across a glassblower making hollow swans from his workshop which wasn’t that unusual. That is until you realise his workshop was the back of a removal lorry! More about liquids in glass later.

Stress Relieving.

I would have stayed with the Scientific Glassblowing Company for ever if it wasn’t for my Mother-in Law who needed family support in Hemel Hempstead. So, I popped into Jencons Scientific Limited who at that time were based in the town to see if they had any vacancies for scientific glassblowers. They had and I stayed for about three years on a steep learning curve. It wasn’t the fact that Jencons employed many lampworkers but more that they segregated different skill sets such as lathe workers, grinders, and those in the graduation department. This was a big and important company in the grand scheme of the humble scientific glassblower! Several glassblowers had left Jencons to start their own businesses. One, Ken Tindale set up a company called Scorglass in Luton and asked me to work for him on Saturdays. Lo behold I found that one of his employees was none other than Gary Clayton who had worked for my Uncle all those years beforehand and was now my Brother-in-Law! It was whilst at Scorglass that I learnt how to make vases, flowers and lovebugs. The latter were hollow caterpillar like animals filled with coloured water. What made a larger impression upon me was being employed on a piece work basis where I was paid for glass items I had made. Sure, this made my production experience even more valuable.

One technique of lampworking I was introduced to but never master was the art of glass weaving or as some called it, knitting. At the time glass parties were very popular and resembled a “Tupperware” gather except where plastic dominated glass was the chosen material. Glass knitted ornaments were so popular that even garden centres were selling them, and demand easily outpaced the supply. I remember seeing boxes of glass from Taiwan that were being imported to satisfy buyers but then the bubble burst and fashion dictate a more robust style of glassware. On closer examination the so called “cheap” knitted pieces were cracked but it appeared easy to cover up mistakes by covering up with more knitted glass. The technique is well explained and illustrated in the book Creative Glassblowing. Scientific and Ornamental by James Hammesfahr & Clair Strong.

I gained promotion at Jencons by virtue of being able to make a mercury diffusion pump in the allotted time which if I remember correctly was eight hours. I know the glassblowers were given the set time of two hours for a double coil condenser where of course we all completed that task in one and three quarters of an hour.

I discovered that one can fuse glass to metal and if a graded seal process was strictly followed than soft glasses could be joined to hard glasses. I learnt how to work with Silica glass which is one of the hardest glasses available. I noted that Jencons employed one or two bench workers that worked exclusively with silica and were allowed free milk. I also noted they wore very dark spectacles and reminded myself that for any future work that I may encounter.

The definitive history of Jencons can be found in the British Society of Scientific Glassblowers Journal Volume 58, No 4, October 2020. I first came across this organisation when I spied a pile of magazines in the foreman’s office. They were past issues of the BSSG Journal. Alongside was another pile of similar publications but with the title “Fusion”. This I realised was the publication of the American Scientific Glassblowers Society. I asked if I could borrow some copies and during reading them found so many fascinating articles that I soon became a member of the BSSG. A few months laterI read in the Journal of a situation vacancy in the far North of Scotland for the post of Head Scientific Glassblower in with the responsibility of managing a scientific glass department for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at the Dounreay Nuclear Power Establishment. In 1979 I flew up for an interview by the then glassblower Geoff Jackson at Culham Labs, Oxford which was the centre of fusion experiments, known as JET. I got the job and started at Dounreay in 1981.

To be continued……