Image courtesy of Victor Trabucco.

Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco (1949– ) is a self-taught glass artist and magician based in Buffalo, New York. Originally an ironworker, Trabucco began experimenting with glass using his home torch in 1974, after seeing a flameworking demonstration. A maker of paperweights and small sculptures, Trabucco has pioneered new flameworking and polishing techniques and invented glassworking equipment. A significant contribution is his method of eliminating the seam found in paperweights after their creation. In addition, Trabucco has served as a technical advisor to Steuben Glass and has created his own glass illusions as a magician.

Works

Blaschka Style Flowers and Branch, 2019. Glass. H: 16 in. Image courtesy of Victor Trabucco.

Nature in Ice Strawberries, 2010. Glass paperweight. H: 4 in. Image courtesy of Victor Trabucco.

Super Magnum Lizard, 2001. Glass paperweight. Diam: 5 in. Image courtesy of Victor Trabucco.

Paperweight maker Victor Trabucco discusses the history of the vacuum pump.

Playing01:38 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Paperweight maker Victor Trabucco discusses the history of the vacuum pump. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:37.

Victor Trabucco: Okay, let me give you a little bit of the history of the vacuum. All right, now, I didn’t invent it. I think it really came from the scientific community. Probably all the way back to even a guy like Harold Hacker, he—cause he did scientific glass, and that’s where they actually use those vacuum pumps. So when they were making the scientific glass. So that’s where we feel that it came from. Nobody knows exactly who first started using it in paperweights. And it’s sometimes hard to tell, unless the weights are more—the early paperweights weren’t that complicated, so it’s hard to tell if they did use a vacuum or not, and depending on the type of glass that they use, if it was soft enough it would flow around. Cause, you know, all the antique French weights, like the Pantin lizards and all that, were very dimensional. And of course, they didn’t have a vacuum in those days. So it’s just by looking at things it’s hard to tell, but if the weight is more complicated, you know, I can certainly decide—I can probably make an estimated guess that if they used a vacuum or not. And then over the years, I mean, they—at one point it was a very guarded secret. And some people now I see they even advertise, like, ‘It is a vacuum encased paperweight,’ which is so silly to say that, I think. It gives you some advantage, but the real art is how you construct the paperweights, the temperatures and things like that.

Permalink

Victor Trabucco discusses the polariscope he made.

Playing1:17 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco discusses consulting for Corning Glass at Steuben. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:17.

Victor Trabucco: I make this thing called a polariscope which shows stress in glass when you use different types of glass, or just annealing, how long to anneal things. Most people just overshoot it because they don’t know how to really read this polariscope. I’ve had some companies call me, and I’ve sold them the polariscope and they’ve asked me how to—they told me a cycle that they were running. Because if you have a production studio, you want the glass to come out of your annealing oven as soon as possible, because the longer you tie that up, you know, the more equipment you need to have to run your production through. So a lot of—I have a couple of friends that have used some of my technology here, some of my information, and they’ve greatly reduced their annealing schedule and still have no strain in the glass and they’re able to open their ovens a lot earlier and then reuse them again to charge them up and their production for the day. So this one company called me from Utah, and they were—it was taking five days to anneal this piece. And they told me the dimensions and I said, ‘Oh, that’s way over shot.’ And so over the phone, I just gave my annealing schedule. [inaudible] Right from the hip there, I just gave them the information and I cut it down from five days down to one day.

Permalink

Victor Trabucco discusses consulting for Corning Glass at Steuben.

Playing00:39 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco discusses consulting for Corning Glass at Steuben. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:39.

Victor Trabucco: And then in the late nineties, early 2000, I was a consultant for Steuben glass [Steuben Glass Works, Corning, New York] I—and I’ve invented—I’m probably the one of the only lampworkers that has such an extensive cold working shop. I’ve invented machines, and a process for polishing glass. Some of that technology I sold to Corning Glass at Steuben. They used my system for about 10 or 15 years, and like 60% of their production went through the system that I built for them. I changed their whole operation. They actually dismantled their whole cold working shop, and rebuilt it.

Permalink

Victor Trabucco talks about eliminating the seam in paperweights.

Playing0:19 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco talks about eliminating the seam in paperweights. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:19.

Victor Trabucco: Well, one of the first innovations was—lampwork weights, when they’re put together, there’s a top and a bottom, and I was the first one to eliminate—there’s a definite seam, or a line, that you’ll see in a lot of lampwork weights, where you can see the division line. That was something that I eliminated.

Permalink

Victor Trabucco talks about eliminating the seam in paperweights.

Playing00:19 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco talks about eliminating the seam in paperweights. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:19.

Victor Trabucco: Well, one of the first innovations was—lampwork weights, when they’re put together, there’s a top and a bottom, and I was the first one to eliminate—there’s a definite seam, or a line, that you’ll see in a lot of lampwork weights, where you can see the division line. That was something that I eliminated.

Permalink

Victor Trabucco talks about his Nature and Ice Series of paperweights, which departed from the traditional round shape of a weight.

Playing01:05 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco talks about his Nature in Ice Series of paperweights, which departed from the traditional round shape of a weight. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:00.

Victor Trabucco: Well, in the, yeah in the late—in the eighties, I took—Paul Stankard and I, we both came out in the same year with a—we departed from the traditional round shape of the paperweight, and mine was the Nature and Ice series. And then also these inclusions, where I did grinding and polishing of—and put some parts of the paperweight together with slabs of crystal. And I can send you some images of that, it’s called my Inclusion series. So we were the first ones that kind of depart from the traditional paperweight shape, and at that time Paul Jokelson, who was the president of the Paperweight Association, [Paperweight Collectors Association, Inc] was quite disturbed with our [laughs] our transition. But that was interesting because maybe a year or two later when he wrote a book, he put one of my Nature and Ice weights on the cover of his book. [laughs] So he finally accepted the idea.

Permalink

Victor Trabucco discusses the Paperweight Weekend, working with glass for the first time, and his personal innovations.

Playing03:23 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco discusses the Paperweight Weekend, working with glass for the first time, and his personal innovations. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 03:23.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Victor Trabucco talks about the Paperweight Weekend. Clip length: 00:31.

Victor Trabucco: Yeah, it [Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center] was certainly a very comfortable place to go. It’s very homey, and everybody was very friendly, and I thought the facility was wonderful for having a convention. And I always enjoyed the camaraderie there, but there was always a lot of artists that attended, so we always had good conversation, and a lot of great collectors. So I really did enjoy it. I always looked forward to it. I never—I don’t believe in the early days, I missed any of those. 

Time stamp: 00:35
Clip 2: Victor Trabucco discusses working with glass for the first time. Clip length: 01:32.

Victor Trabucco: Yeah, that’s how I finally—I actually was working—I was an ironworker, I worked with my father. And I was working during the winter and I got laid off, and that’s when I first got interested in the glass, that would—like I said, those guys who were at the mall during Christmastime. And actually, my wife—this would have been, like, ’74? And there was a piece of one of these little punch bowls that was made out of, you know, that lacework that they do. And my wife wanted one, and it was like eight dollars. And I said, ‘Well, I’m not gonna spend eight dollars on that. I think I could make that.’ [laughs] So I went home and I had a torch, because I was an ironworker, I had a torch at home, and I broke a pop bottle up and I stretched the glass out. And then I met this glass artist at another mall, and his name was Al Verrier, I’m still in contact with him. And he told me where I could get a torch, he told me about didymium glasses, the right glasses to wear, where I could get borosilicate glass. And he made one little piece for me and from there on, I just went—when I went home, I started experimenting, and that’s how I learned. I was all self-taught. Then over the years, like I said, I was always impressed with this: I used to go to the Steuben Glass [Steuben Glass Works, Corning, New York] and watch them work, and I said, ‘Someday, I would love to go through their shop.’ And then years later here, I was actually teaching them my techniques. So that was pretty rewarding.

Time stamp: 02:10
Clip 3: Victor Trabucco talks about being the first paperweight artist to use a glory hole in a lampwork shop. Clip length: 01:13.

Victor Trabucco: So I was the first one to actually use a glory hole in the lampwork shop. And that was something that I guarded for a long time. I’d have showings at—people come to my studio, and I had actually a wall that I would build around my whole glory hole system and everything. So I was the first one to combine the glory hole with the lampworking process. It gives you the advantage to work a lot larger. At some of these—and I even see some of these lampworkers today, they’ve got aluminum shields on, like a pie plate on their face with little holes so they can see through it, and then they’ve got these aluminum suits on, or reflective suits and everything, to keep the heat away—because as you get bigger, so—I’ve made weights that are like six inches in diameter, and that takes so much heat. And if you think about it, you can only get your arm’s length away from that torch. So there’s so much heat in your face, and then your arms and everything, that it’s really very uncomfortable, and it kind of limits your process. So, that’s why I always made such—I was just credited with making such large pieces that hadn’t been done before, and so that was my—kind of my edge.

Permalink

Victor Trabucco speaks about Dwight Lanmon consulting with him on antique paperweight-making techniques and Lanmon’s discovery of Pantin as the maker of lizard paperweights.

Playing02:41 Transcript
Victor Trabucco

Victor Trabucco speaks about Dwight Lanmon consulting with him on antique paperweight-making techniques and Lanmon’s discovery of Pantin as the maker of lizard paperweights. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:41.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Victor Trabucco speaks about Dwight Lanmon consulting with him about antique paperweight-making techniques. Clip length: 01:39.

Victor Trabucco: I’ll tell you that my opinion on some of the things that Paul Jokelson would say and state—and I think this was true of all the paperweight experts, let’s say, they had some misconceptions of how things were really done. And what was advanced, and what wasn’t. I remember Dwight Lanmon, who was a big supporter of form, and what we did. And he came to my studio and spent a day here with me, and he was going through a lot of images of the antique paperweights, and he was asking me what was, you know, great accomplishments and what wasn’t. And I went item for item, I went through and I pointed out the different techniques. And in fact that he was so impressed with what I had told him, he felt armed enough that when he gave his next speech at one of the PCA meetings—Paperwork Collectors Association meetings, that he felt as though the work that was being done today was the second golden age of paperweight making. And at that point, it was always just the French antique weights. So we were kind of second-class citizens. So he finally, after pointing out some of the techniques, at some of the things that we’ve done, how much we had pushed the techniques and advancement of that stuff, the process, and so he felt confident with the information that I gave him that he could make statements like that, and he also asked me to be a technical consultant for him when he was going to write a book. Of course, he left Corning before he did that, but that was still quite a nice honor.

Time stamp: 01:42
Clip 2: Victor Trabucco talks about Dwignt Lanmon’s discovery of Pantin as the maker of lizard paperweights. Clip length: 00:58.

Victor Trabucco: And so—in fact, he’s [Dwight Lanmon] the one that actually discovered and gave credit to who made the lizard weight, because before his presence in the field, it was always known as the unknown French Factory. They didn’t know where those, those lizard weights were made. And what he did when he was in France, there was a museum and he went down through some of their collection that was, I think, in storage. And he found this snake that was carved, and you could, if you looked at the face of the snake and the face on the lizard, you could see it was done by the same hand. But the snake head was documented, that was made by Pantin and what year it was made and everything, so there was documentation of it. And from that he surmised that those weights were made at the Pantin Factory so, from that point on, that’s why they were credited with that factory. Before that, it was just called the unknown factory.

Permalink