ON YER BIKE! A VIEW OF A LIFE CYCLE.

It started with making glass storks. Of course, it didn’t as people buy storks as presents not only to commemorate a birth but also for gifts at christenings. So, it might have started with me making a glass embryo in a test tube and if I had left it there then all well and good. Trouble is I added an open door to this sculpture which added a whole new meaning. Where does life start and thought it helpful(just to me) if I went backwards.

Imagine life starting in a coffin and I have done a few glass ones at that. One I made for an exhibition involved a small coffin about 300 mm long construction form glass rod. Inside and emerging from the top was a hollow glass figure. Inside the figure I had stuffed loads of technical drawings of scientific glassware. The idea was that this was the endangered scientific glassblower close to extinction and defying all that wished to see the skills dead rising from death! I see it as a fun piece, a conversation item but not a real landmark in the average life cycle.

If I may reflect back on glass storks, then a big no no is making a stork before a baby is born. This is dangerous in that it presumes too much, especially if I don’t know the sex of the baby. An easy get out is to use clear glass but tradition has it that I use blue for a boy, pink for a girl and use clear only when no one cares. I have made storks with twins and triplets. Anything large and the stork would have to have a neck brace to carry the extra strength!

In between storks and coffins there is sex and as a glass artist I have made my fair share of erotic glass toys. This I feel is quite a dangerous sport and not to be recommended for the faint hearted. When working full time as a scientific glassblower I was often making apparatus with male and female joints. The glass cones always went into the sockets. Never the other way round.

Coming of age presents great opportunities for glass gifts. These can include 18 or 21 keys, candle holders using glass rod shaped in various sizes of numbers. Then there are anniversaries such as silver and gold. I use liquid gold painted on the surface of the glass then fired in a kiln to create items for fiftieth weddings. Strange thing is that if I used liquid silver the same way the result is a grey looking drab item which no one wants on the twenty fifth party. Instead, I use platinum. Diamond celebrations need no colour as I prefer to create glass diamond shapes.

We all know how life is created and it doesn’t need to include marriage but when a wedding is announced then there is more to this event than having a party. I have done many wedding favours in my time although they don’t seem so popular now. Wee thistles, wedding bells, hearts, and fire engines for a couple of firefighters. Wedding cake tops are good fun and remember the glass pigs? Well, a couple of police officers who obviously had a sense of humour commissioned me to make two pigs in wedding outfits to go on top of their wedding cakes. Oh, how all the guests laughed! I would have thought handcuffs been as appropriate and have made a few glass cuffs as well.

Glass wedding gifts include rolling pins which are very simple since, they are just a glass tube shape either end. Using heavy walled glass tubing really adds good weight to the final result and can be used more as a baton then a decorative present of no practical use. Actually, glass rolling pins are extremely useful as they can be filled with water or other liquids and the smooth surface means what ever is being rolled doesn’t stick to the pin. This applies to husbands as well as pastry!

Of course, not all my work involves a flame as I do a little engraving. Commemorative wine glasses seem popular, and a few times customers have bought glasses from another shop(drat!) then asked me to engrave names on. For weddings engagements then a couple of wine glasses seem appropriate. I was asked to engrave a groom’s name on one glass and the brides name on the other. Why don’t I engrave both names on both glasses O asked. The customer replied that each name was just on one glass then if they ever split up and divorced then they could have their own glass! Forward planning indeed!

So, we have glass representing birth, sex, death, weddings, and anniversaries but there’s more. At one end we have the obvious death. I sometimes think commemorating death is far more important than celebrating births and tells a lot about society. When, in 2005 my wife Maureen died I worked intensely on a glass sculpture consisting of two hearts entwined which was placed on top of Maureen’s coffin at her funeral. People thought this weird I think but it gave me strength to cope with the future.

Before birth of course has to be conception unless, unless……….? When I was working in Manchester in the late 1970s, I was making laboratory glassware for a local vet who asked for a glass device to collect semen from various animals. That’s the thing about making things from glass, anything is possible and in my case its usually probably too.