Paul J. Stankard

Paul Stankard talks about what glassmakers like Yaffa Sikorsky-Todd learned from his flameworking workshop. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:14.

Paul Stankard: I used paperweights as the theme because I was a paperweight maker, but people came to it with their own expectations. I know that Yaffa Sikorsky [Todd] told me that at that workshop she was able to figure out how to put fuzz on an iris’s throat piece. She made glass irises. [John] Nygren told me that he was turning his glass black because of the acetylene he was using. And he realized that if he was gonna flamework decoration on his vessels, gas and oxygen would give him color. Cause up until that point he just had to take what he was getting because of the acetylene. So, I mean, people came to that seminar because nobody knew anything about flameworking. It was called lampworking at the time, but later it became flameworking. And so they were just learning about flameworking and probably were figuring out how can they incorporate this, some of this process into their glass and benefit from it. Because I think that one of the hallmarks of the studio glass movement was people were experimenting.

Paul Stankard talks about Donavon Boutz making beads at the flameworking workshop. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:06.

Paul Stankard: We were all hanging around, and we were just making things, and he said, ‘Let me make a bead.’ So he made a bead, and everybody got all excited about the bead and started making beads on mandrels, but we used welding rods, copper welding rods. And we dipped them in clay, and we used—made the beads on the welding rods. And the jewelry people came over at night. And Kenny Carder was a local. And Kenny used to make beer runs to a different county cause Mitchell County was dry. So some of the people would go up to Ken, and they would go out and bring back beer, and we’d have the music blasting. And at night people were—I think we had about, probably 8 or 9 set-ups—and people were making jewelry and beads. And Kenny said—it was kinda cute—Kenny made a firecracker. He came over, he says, ‘Look what I made.’ I said, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good.’ He said to me, ‘Everything I make blows up, so I thought I’d make a firecracker.’

Paul Stankard describes a slide showing set-ups waiting to be encapsulated in glass. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:26.

Paul Stankard: After I demonstrated my paperweight making, people made their inclusions. And then we made paperweights; people made their own paperweights. So these are, this is, these are three set-ups waiting to be encapsulated in glass. These are some of the students. But they all look figurative. See I made a flower and a figure, and people gravitated towards the figures.

Paul Stankard notes Mark Peiser’s surprise at how he made paperweights. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:52.

Paul Stankard: You go over to the bench, and there’s a collar, I call it. There’s a plate and a collar, and then there’s a Bunsen burner under that collar. Now, I heated up glass and picked up my inclusions. I picked up my set-up—called a set-up or inclusions—and brought it over, and then they’re heating up glass, and we’re finishing up the paperweight. So Mark Peiser—when I did this, this might have been my first demo. When Mark Peiser saw this, he says, ‘Christ, he just dumps it on.’ And I said, ‘That’s right Mark. I just dump it on.’ Because everybody thought—nobody knew how the hell I made my paperweights. How I—excuse my French—nobody knew how I was making my paperweights. [laughs] And they imagined all sorts of—whatever they imagined.

Paul Stankard discusses how Paul Hollister was eager to learn about “the nuances of contemporary glass.” Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:41.

Paul Stankard: Paul added a scholarly flavor to the fun. And he  was eager to learn about the nuances of contemporary glass. He was eager to get into the artist’s, you know, kind of understand the artist’s point of view, or what they were experimenting with. And he was an artist himself, so he could read things and see how work has been nuanced in a way that maybe a layperson might overlook the advancement.

Paul Stankard discusses sharing paperweight-making techniques at his flameworking workshop. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:10.

Paul Stankard: I went there with no secrets. And that had a very, very, I don’t want to overuse the word epiphany, but it made a very strong impression on me. It wasn’t the end of the world. Nobody—people were intellectually curious, but nobody wanted to quick make floral paperweights like Paul Stankard. A few did, but for the most part people were there, curious about the techniques, and wondering how could they take advantage of this process, lampworking slash flameworking. Now the thing that made my approach to flameworking so attractive to the glass community, I was working with soda-lime glass; I wasn’t working with borosilicate glass. So I could integrate into any glass studio, use their glass, and use it to make components and decorate whatever they were doing. So that—up until—I was primarily a flameworker of soda-lime glass, where Ginny Ruffner in Seattle was a flameworker of borosilicate glass.

Paul Stankard talks about Paul Hollister and The Corning Museum of Glass. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:32.

Paul Stankard: Well they—the Corning crowd, I think Paul was very respected. You know, he was appreciated, and he was respected in The Corning Museum crowd, and they were very scholarly up there. Paul was perfect for them because he was a glass art historian. He was an expert on paperweights. And then he became knowledgeable and critiqued studio glass. So he was like the man for all seasons. Plus he had all the credentials.

Paul Stankard talks about Paul Hollister lamenting that Charles Kaziun was not making modern examples of weights. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:26.

Paul Stankard: So Paul is introduced to the paperweights as a young man, and his interest translated into this Encyclopedia of Glass Paperweights. And that was a contribution to the collectors, and especially the collectors of the antique French paperweights. So Paul was interested in the contemporary work, and he went to visit Charles Kaziun, who was the most respected contemporary paperweight maker. And he visited Kaziun at his studio. And I read his critique of Kaziun’s career in The Encyclopedia of Glass Paperweights, and he lamented that—I was amazed, he lamented the fact that Kaziun wasn’t doing modern examples; he was re-creating what had been done by the French. And that really made a big impression on me, because I didn’t have an art background at all. I came out of a vocational school and worked in industry, worked as a scientific glassblower, and wanted to make paperweights and these expectations—Paul Hollister really introduced me to creative expectations, or expectations that would allow me to grow and mature as a maker.

Paul Stankard reminisces about discussing studio glass with Paul Hollister. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:43.

Paul Stankard: Paul would—we would have these wonderful conversations. I mean, it was almost—just—I love contemporary glass, studio glass, but I kept my focus on encapsulating colored glass—flowers encapsulated in clear glass. I mean, I was fascinated by the studio glass movement, and felt a part of it, and would talk to Paul about studio glass. And I was quite a student of it, because I was not only following it at Heller Gallery [New York, New York], through Heller Gallery and Habatat [Habatat Gallery, Royal Oak, Michigan], but I was collecting it. I made some serious purchases.

Paul Stankard talks about a woman who still has the beads he gave her from his flameworking workshop. Oral History Interview with Paul Stankard by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 22, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:37.

Paul Stankard: I was making beads, I called them healing beads. And I would give them—I gave all my beads away. And I gave a woman, a very pleasant woman, I gave her a healing bead. I said, ‘I want you to have this healing bead, it has magical powers.’ So I was giving a lecture a couple years ago at the Smithsonian, and she shows up with her bead. And I could—you know, it was like 30 years later or something. I don’t how long ago—’86, ‘96, ‘06. It’s almost—over 25 years later, she shows up. It was kind of—I felt honored.

Paul Stankard discusses giving a flameworking demo at Wheaton Village prior to his Penland workshop. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 22, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:24.

Paul Stankard: I had never really taught at that level. I had demonstrated and I gave lectures, but I never had a workshop, never gave a workshop. So then I thought, ‘Well, let’s—’ somehow, I had an opportunity to give a demo at Wheaton’s, which I’ve done many many times now. So that helped me organize things, and they—it was an interesting revelation for me, because the flamework—the paperweight making was very very secretive. I wasn’t going around promoting my techniques, because they were personal and blah blah. But once I accepted the invitation to give this workshop at Penland, I decided I would have no secrets. And that was a very important decision, because it freed me up from any—’This is my technique and I better not show it or they’ll copy me.’ So it really gave me a lot of emotional freedom to share, and by sharing I won over the people who were curious and they—you know, you get into a dialogue of different techniques and you learn when you share information, it’s not a one-way street. It’s a conversation that kind of blends a lot of information into an interesting point of view.

Paul Stankard complements Paul Hollister on his importance as a glass critic in a 1985 conversation. Interview with Paul Stankard by Paul Hollister, June 26, 1985. Interview with Paul Stankard by Paul Hollister,  January 11, 1987 (Rakow title: Paul Stankard interview [sound recording] / with Paul Hollister, BIB ID: 168454) Clip length: 03:45.

Paul Stankard (PS): [Speaking while driving] Oh, I’d like [laughs] Would the, with the recorder in front of us, I’d like to make sense out of it.

Paul Hollister (PH): We’re going through Paulsboro [New Jersey].

PS: Well, we’re heading [PS and PH talk at the same time.] We’re heading towards Mayfair [New Jersey]. But with the recorder in front of you, you’ve been responsible for stimulating more artists in glass than any person that I could think of. And your ideas have been integrated into the artists’ work at a—it’s been phenomenal. I don’t know, somebody, well, a lot of the conversations that we’ve had over the years about contemporary glass and about the very—and your criticism about the work has—the works evolved and met your predictions. I just figure that it’s your, you know, your criticism of the—you know, the artist, if he, if he has half a brain, he’ll consider the critic’s review and if he agrees, he’ll implement it.

PH: There’s some of them that just [laughs] give you a complete brush off. Let me tell you one little thing, this was part of the—

PS: Well, that’s lack of maturity as an artist. You’ve given me over the years, your—our conversations on the telephone have stimulated me, has produced, God, many, many ideas that I’ve implemented.

PH: Well, I’m glad of that.

PS: Yeah, well, it’s exciting, you know. You take the, you get the ideas where you find ‘em.

PH: I wonder how much they want for those Gothic windows? Not too much, I don’t think. Boy, those are terrific.

PS: Another interesting thing about your criticism about my work over the years has led me to discover things that research, various artist imagery, how I could be, you know, how to render nature—oh, I don’t know. I think that it’s great to have input, and I always thought it was very flattering for a person to consider your work cause there’s so much competition. Artwork is competing—

PH: Yup.

PS: —with tons and tons of work for attention and when you give a person’s work attention, I think that’s a very flattering experience.

PH: Yeah, I guess, I got some attention for you in the bag here.

PS: But the contemporary glass experience, and here we are in 1985, and the contemporary glass experience is pooping out, and it’s pooping against the collective will of hundreds of people [chuckles]. Nobody wants it to disappear and for some reason, the energy’s—the energy level is being drained right out of it. You can almost see it. Month to month.

PH: I’m getting that feeling, too.

PS: Well.

PH: But let me just mention one thing just before we go in. When you say, ‘giving input to people,’ in this talk in the High Museum [Atlanta, Georgia], which I will send you—

PS: Mm-hmm.

PH: —I had mentioned the, on the matter of criticism, that one person I had made the mistake of reading something that I had written to him, cause I wanted to check over the technical details to see if it was alright, and I said this is a prominent artist and after he heard it, he tried to stop publication of the piece.

PS: [laughs]

PH: I didn’t mention who it was.

In a recording by Paul Hollister of Paul Standard’s 1986 Flameworking Workshop, Stankard introduces Hollister, discusses Charles Kaziun and secrecy in paperweight making, and asks attendees what they wish to learn.  Paul Hollister and Dwight Lanmon Lectures, May 17, 1986, with Paul Stankard Flameworking Workshop, June 1986. (Rakow title: Wheaton [sound recording] / Paul Hollister, BIB ID: 167926). Clip length: 07:14.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Paul Stankard introduces Paul Hollister to participants of his workshop. Clip length: 02:27.

Paul Stankard: We’re gonna have one heck of a week, I mean if we can’t make this thing stimulating and relevant, we don’t have anything in here. Paul Hollister has painted. He’s a painter, studio artist, who spent his career painting. He became interested—I think, I may be wrong—but he became interested in paperweights as a child. It held his interest. He went on to write the definitive book on antique French paperweights. He’s a connoisseur with paperweights. I believe, of course he may disagree and the other artists may disagree, but I believe his familiarity with paperweight making and the paperweight techniques gave him a background and an understanding to appreciate contemporary glass, because he went from paperweight scholarship, to critiquing and writing about contemporary glass. So Paul Hollister is a resource, and I think just as important a resource as I am. So we’re happy to have you here, Paul. Gerrie [Geraldine] Casper, another resource, is curator of the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum. The Bergstrom-Mahler Museum is in Wisconsin, and they have the world’s—one of the world’s—probably the world’s finest collection of antique French paperweights. And I’m a paperweight maker, and I’m happy to say that somewhere along the line, I realized if you’re gonna do great work—good work—you have to know what “good” is. So Gerrie Casper’s here to talk about the antique French paperweight experience, to show us—to give us a slide lecture on lampwork flowers in the antique French paperweights. So that, for me, has been my reference point. What have they done in the past? And the English have this wonderful saying, the English feel that if you’re going to do a decorative art object that has been done in the past, the only justification for doing it is to do it better than they did it in the past. So—in order to do it better than how they did it in the past, you gotta know what they did. Gerrie, we’re happy to have you here.

Geraldine Casper: Thank you, great to be here.

Time stamp: 02:30
Clip 2: Paul Stankard talks about secrecy in paperweight making and Charles Kaziun. Clip length: 02:41.

Paul Hollister [PH]: Glassmaking, historically, has always been a very secretive process, and in most of Europe and in France and Murano and other places, the only people who were allowed to be told glass secrets were members of the same family. And these secrets were passed on through generations and generations, so that until recently, factories had the secrets for glassmaking and nobody else could find out about them, except those working in trial and error. And in 1962 this whole thing exploded and broke wide open. But it didn’t break wide open for the paperweight makers, and one of the great early American paperweight maker of the thirties and forties and fifties, Charles Kaziun, would not reveal anything; he said to me once, he said, ‘You’re a writer. I’ll take you downstairs and show you anything in my shop on one condition: That you never write about it.’ And I said, ‘I can’t promise you that because I’m a writer.’ So he never showed me. [audience laughs] And this particular thing has been secret up until this morning, up until we were at Wheaton last week, but this is going to be the real opening of the box of secrets.

PS: Well we’re going to open the box, but my big secret over the years was I had no secrets. I’ve told people all over the country a lot of things. But this is my first workshop, and, you know.

PH: Yeah, and you are very generous.

PS: Okay. [laughs] I’m coming out of the closet. [group laughs] Closet lampworker, coming out of the closet. Okay. What, alright, now I think what we’d begin with is maybe I’ll talk about the equipment. This is a Carlisle Torch [Carlisle School of Glass Art, Millville, New Jersey]. I live in South Jersey; living and working in South Jersey, I have the advantage of all of the industrial support for the glass industry. South Jersey is—their primary industry is glass, so there’s a lot of machine shops and small—well, companies that service the glass industry. This torch is the workhorse of my process, it’s a Carlisle CC burner.

Time stamp: 05:13
Clip 3: Paul Stankard asks attendees what they want to learn in his workshop. Clip length: 02:00.

Paul Stankard [PS]: Any ideas of what you’d like me to do? I know what I would like to do, but—do you have any ideas, any? Anyone want to talk about what they expect out of the studio and the workshop? Chris, what do you expect out of this workshop?

Chris Buzzini [CB]: Well, I expected to understand how you can take the same materials that a lot of us use and it’s just much better.

PS: Okay.

CB: This think it’s probably evolves, you know, from your desire, first of all, and your abilities, and your hard work, and I think—

PS: I hope that it’s because Paul Stankard is only—there’s only one Paul Stankard in the world. And that’s the reason why I was giving a workshop in a sense—if what I do is about fancy craft, then okay, that’s not that big of a deal. If what I’m able to do with the glass is because I have a particular interest in flowers and nature and I’m trying to communicate that interest, then, that makes it—that makes it special, for me. So, I want to go—I want to share all this technology, all these techniques, and I know that it has application in hot glass. I know that I can—I can take just about any piece of contemporary glass—I think of myself as a decorative artist, artist in a decorative arts tradition. So I decorate. That’s my thing. And I could take any piece of contemporary glass and decorate it. Can’t quite tell somebody how to decorate it for themselves. And I’ve told lots of people that have made [inaudible][group laughs] So—but I don’t know. Okay. Yaffa—I didn’t introduce Yaffa Sikorsky. She’s an artist from North Carolina whose work is—I’ve been admiring for years. I thought I had bought my first piece of glass from Yaffa in ’75, ’76?

Yaffa Sikorsky [YS]: Yeah.

PS: Do you want people to know that you’re a pro?