Donavon Boutz

Tennessee-based artist Donavon Boutz (1945– ) is a third-generation glassmaker in a family of German-American glassblowers; Boutz learned the techniques of traditional Eastern European flamework, including beadmaking, from his father, Jean Boutz, in the family glass studio before earning an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, under Harvey Littleton. In addition to his own glassblowing, Boutz has taught beadmaking widely for various institutions.

Works

Some Place in Time, 2007. Image courtesy of Donavon Boutz.

Trip to Andromeda, 2005. Image courtesy of Donavon Boutz.

Out of the Garden, 1986. Image courtesy of Donavon Boutz.

Donavon Boutz discusses Paul Stankard’s paperweight-making techniques.

Playing01:54 Transcript
Donavon Boutz

Donavon Boutz discusses Paul Stankard’s paperweight-making techniques. Oral history interview with Donavon Boutz by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 23, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:54.

Donavon Boutz: You see those little torches are satisfactory for making what’s called the setup of a floral paperweight. That’s where you make the little flowers in the—or the little bugs and all of those kinds of things, but then you have to move over to a bigger torch. Now the torch that I am working at is I believe actually Paul’s personal torch that he brought—and it can be fine-tuned from that very little flame up to a very large flame. Are you familiar with the way of making the paperweights that Paul makes and other floral makers make? You purchase what are called hockey pucks, and they’re the crystal cases. And so you get those on a punty, and you have your little setup that you’re going to put in the middle of the paperweight, and you get those molten hot, and there’s a little mold that you put over those that allows you to suck all of the air out of that mold. So you bring the two pieces together, suck all the air out and it’s what gives you that clean, very crisp no, air bubbles—takes a lot of skill to learn to do that really well because if you smear one hockey puck at all, it’s completely overwhelmed your little setup and it’s all smeared on the inside of the paperweight and you know quite frankly that’s what makes Paul’s work so unbelievable, is that he—and he may have failures, all of us do, but he is just absolutely superb.

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Donavon Boutz discusses getting caught in a hurricane with Harvey Littleton.

Playing1:47 Transcript
Donavon Boutz

Donavon Boutz discusses Paul Stankard’s paperweight-making techniques. Oral history interview with Donavon Boutz by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 23, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:54.

Donavon Boutz: You see those little torches are satisfactory for making what’s called the setup of a floral paperweight. That’s where you make the little flowers in the—or the little bugs and all of those kinds of things, but then you have to move over to a bigger torch. Now the torch that I am working at is I believe actually Paul’s personal torch that he brought—and it can be fine-tuned from that very little flame up to a very large flame. Are you familiar with the way of making the paperweights that Paul makes and other floral makers make? You purchase what are called hockey pucks, and they’re the crystal cases. And so you get those on a punty, and you have your little setup that you’re going to put in the middle of the paperweight, and you get those molten hot, and there’s a little mold that you put over those that allows you to suck all of the air out of that mold. So you bring the two pieces together, suck all the air out and it’s what gives you that clean, very crisp no, air bubbles—takes a lot of skill to learn to do that really well because if you smear one hockey puck at all, it’s completely overwhelmed your little setup and it’s all smeared on the inside of the paperweight and you know quite frankly that’s what makes Paul’s work so unbelievable, is that he—and he may have failures, all of us do, but he is just absolutely superb.

Permalink

Donavon Boutz talks about making art goblets.

Playing00:31 Transcript
Donavon Boutz

Donavon Boutz talks about making art goblets. Oral history interview with Donavon Boutz by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 23, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:31.

Donavon Boutz: Teaching beadmaking was something I wanted to do to help sustain the craft of lampworking, but my real love in blowing glass was making really fancy art goblets, which we’re in a period of time right now where people don’t seem to be nearly so interested in those kinds of objects as they once were.

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Donavon Boutz discusses his father Jean encouraging him to continue lampworking.

Playing00:59 Transcript
Donavon Boutz

Donavon Boutz discusses his father Jean encouraging him to continue lampworking. Oral history interview with Donavon Boutz by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 23, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:59.

Donavon Boutz: From my perspective one of the things that my dad talked to me about a lot was not letting the craft die in my lifetime, and so I think that I’ve been a part of keeping that from happening, I think, lampworking in spite of the fact they’re making pot pipes—there is—the craft is alive and well, I think both Paul Stankard’s children are good paperweight makers. There’s a couple of other really good floral paperweight makers out on the west coast, and so I feel very satisfied in that lampworking as a craft did not end in the 20th century.

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Donavon Boutz discusses his father Jean bringing glass in for the Penland workshop.

Playing01:40 Transcript
Donavon Boutz

Donavon Boutz discusses his father, Jean, bringing glass in for the Penland workshop. Oral history interview with Donavon Boutz by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 23, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:39.

Donavon Boutz: Penland did not have the supplies on hand to do the glass work. I don’t know if they’d ordered them late or they hadn’t come, but I phoned my dad and had just had him bring up basically a truckload of glass so we—Dad came up and then Dad brought one of his sets of equipment and then he demonstrated how to make fancy Christmas ornaments, and I think most people who were collectors of my dad’s work think that he was the greatest living Christmas ornament maker in the country. He had a huge palette of colored glass that he could use, and he did the candy-striped ornaments, and one of the things that you can—and talking about that is my dad always worked in lead glass—and the borosilicate glasses, to this day still don’t have the color or the transparency, the vibrancy of lead crystal glass. So that my dad—I’m probably the person now, have the largest collection of raw materials for working in lead glass. And that part of the craft has never come back.

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