YOU NIT REMEMBER UNITS!

2 + 2 doesn’t always result in the sum of 4. Not if we are talking about two tons added to two tons and the answer is given in hundredweights. Then 2 = 2 = 40. So, units can make or break ideas. I know that from bitter experience when trying to translate drawings without taking care to double check measurements. On more than one occasion I have mixed up millimetres and centimetres, usually making more work for myself and losing money as well as a customer.

I was brought up with glass being defined in a confusing mishmash of units. I work with lengths of glass tubes and rods. The length of the tubes when bought are always the same and that length is five feet. However, the diameter varies from say about two millimetres to maybe over two hundred millimetres. Thing is I never bothered thinking it strange working with five feet of ten-millimetre diameter tubing. After a few years, my suppliers of glass told me they were wishing to be compliant with the real world so had to stop selling glass tubing and rod in five-foot lengths and now I had to order in in lengths of fifteen hundred millimetres. Again, I found it weird that the default was millimetres and not metres or even centimetres.

My favourite unit is the little old millimetre. My favourite number is nine so it’s obvious that I love glass rod with a nine-millimetre diameter. In fact, nearly every solid glass object I make is made using nine-millimetre glass rod. People ask me why and I can’t explain other than to say, I use that size because it’s my choice. I have been taking this approach for over thirty years. I don’t favour eight millimetre not ten. Sad, isn’t it?

I use vernier callipers and have done for most of my career to decide what size I am meant to be working to. Once, only once did I make the mistake of using callipers that had the so-called advantage of a dial gauge. Sure, it gave accurate measurements but of course melted as soon as I brought hot glass anywhere near the gauge. In fact, I reckon about nine millimetres was the limit. Any closer and its goodbye the cost of a vernier callipers.

Of course, if I was an engineer, I would be using a micrometer as my default. Sure, I have made a few glass micrometers, but they can’t really be used as such. They are works of art and if there’s one thing that can’t be measured no matter what units, then its art!

Nine seems to be a popular number. For it is that magic number that was used by those that manage my local art gallery in an argument to close the gallery. Apparently nine people visiting a gallery is not enough from a business point of view to sustain the continued operation of an art gallery. This venue was manged by my local council using my money(amongst everyone else within the community). Of course, they knew about numbers, and they may have skimmed the importance of what these numbers mean. So, we revert to units as to what do nine people mean? Did they buy? Was it actually one person, the same person who visited nine times in one day? If so, why? What was the age of these visitors? You get the picture? You may do now but not for much longer when all local art galleries close.

So far, my focus with units is measurement of lengths. Diameters etc… I anneal all my glassware at 565 degrees but when discussing this subject with my American friends I need to qualify that statement by including the unit Centigrade. This is because those in the States favour the Fahrenheit measurement. I have only had one incident involving a mix up of temperatures and the result was opening the oven to find molten glass pouring out onto my shoes!

My experience with setting up exhibitions has brought me into contact with artists who I am convinced think size really is important. For online exhibitions I have seen artists boat that theirs is let’s say 100 x 100. Others meeker shy away in a corner and whisper theirs is only a wee 1 x 1! What’s missing of course is a sprinkling of units. So, the 100 x 100 in millimetres is minute compared to the work that measures are 1 metre x 1 metre. For physical exhibitions asking artists to measure their work seems academic. In my view work is either blooming ginormous or almost invisible. Most work is of course in between. Size anyway is always subjective. However, units are not. They are a precise and exact science which is not really the best friend of an artists.

I hate when a customer asks me to make something to a specific size. One person asked me to make a 6-inch-high candle holder. Of course, I made it half an inch too small and so it was rejected. Made another to the correct spec and then was told by the customer that they really meant 6 CMS and not 6 inches! What a nit!