Penland School of Craft

Ken Carder discusses the importance of Bill Brown’s artists’ residency program at Penland. Oral history interview with Ken Carder by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 6, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:35.

Ken Carder: Let me mention one more thing—Bill Brown created this artist-in-residency idea at Penland, and it was—basically, the foundation of it was to bridge between working with a material and trying to develop that material to a point where you could sustain your livelihood from working with ceramics, or working with glass, or metals. It was a way—the residency program was a period where you could live and stay at Penland and build equipment and develop your skills and try to find in established markets where you could sustain your lifestyle being a creative craft artist. And when I say craft, it’s not necessarily—it’s just describing what would at that time been considered craft disciplines—weaving, ceramics, glass, metals, woodworking, things that we associate with like traditional vocabulary of craft and stuff. But that residency program was this grace period between either, you know, undergrad, grad school or whatever you were doing prior, if your goal was to be a working artist and sustain your lifestyle as a working artist, Bill had this vision where if you could give people that little break right there at the beginning and they were in a very creative environment where they could sort of network out and develop their work to a point where it was interesting and accomplished, then they could get over that hump. And once they got things started they could keep it rolling, and he was instrumental in that, and people that came through that decided to stay in the area because you know, but that point you’re a little spoiled because it’s a beautiful environment, but it’s also a very creative environment. And at the time land and property was still rural, western North Carolina, so the property values were not as inflated as they were in a lot of the more developed urban areas around the country and things, so it was very affordable also to stay in that area, and so a lot of people did. And then, you know, once those seeds were planted they grew. 

Glass artist Flo Perkins discusses the Penland School of Craft. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:26.

Flo Perkins: My favorite place on Earth is Penland, honestly. And—because it’s also people enjoying life. It’s not even about having a good time. They’re enjoying life, and Penland is so gentle that way. And it’s such a nice cross process, cross materials, you know? You have people making books, you have people doing photography, textiles, glass, metal, wood, ceramics. It’s fabulous.

Jay Musler describes his experience at Penland. Oral history interview with Jay Musler by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 5, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:58.

Jay Musler: Well, Penland was an incredible school. You know, it just—it’s not all glass. It’s a number of different things, fiber, metal, ceramics. And I know when I first went there, some students came by and they saw some work I was doing and said, ‘Oh, can I borrow this?’ and I said, ‘Sure, go ahead and take it.’ And they came back and they had woven all this fiber into the glass, and, I said, ‘Wow. This is great. I like this.’ [laughs] But, that’s teaching, and at Penland they encourage people to experiment with different materials and whatnot. But I did like that experience.

Mark Peiser discusses being a co-founder of the Glass Arts Society (GAS). Oral history interview with Mark Peiser by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:45.

Mark Peiser: I’m not much of an organization man, but yeah, I did kind of say, ‘Wait a minute, we need to make some sort of a—we need an organization here, you know, to do that.’ And I did—I was responsible for saying that much of it and then, you know, I was involved a bit at the beginning. I think I was the first comptroller [laughs] whatever that was supposed to be, I don’t remember ever doing anything in that regard. But, of course, I knew all the people and was involved in some of the discussions about, you know, what it should be.

Robert Levin talks about his experiences at Penland and the school’s importance to studio glass. Oral history interview with Robert Levin by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, December 10, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:19.

Robert Levin: Yeah, I think kind of the whole time I felt like I was part of a continuum, because when I went to grad school, the man that was teaching there, Bill Boysen—B-O-Y-S-E-N—he was one of Harvey’s [Littleton] students out of Wisconsin. And then Bill had built the first glass studio at Penland in the late sixties. So that was just kind of coincidental. So I went to Penland and took a glass course and my teacher at Penland for my one glass course that I took was Audrey Handler, who was also a student of Harvey Littleton’s at Wisconsin. And then I went to grad school, and Bill Boysen was my teacher and he was one of Harvey’s students. So the whole kind of lineage with Harvey Littleton and the people coming out of his program and teaching. And then when I was finishing grad school, I worked with Fritz Dreisbach, who was, I believe, another one of [laughs] Harvey’s students. And that’s where I worked out at Pilchuck with Fritz, and Pilchuck was founded by Dale Chihuly, who was another one of Harvey’s students. So anyway, that kind of lineage was apparent to me. And then also there was a lineage that was the residency at Penland. So when I went into the glass residency at Penland, that was part of a heritage or a lineage, you could say, that was started by Mark Peiser, who was the first Penland resident, and then I believe this is the correct chronology, then Bill Bernstein was the Penland resident, and then George Thiewes, who—I’m not sure if George is still involved in glass. And then Fritz Dreisbach, and then Richard Ritter. I might be leaving somebody out in there. And Fritz might’ve been in there before George, that might be reversed. Anyway, but then—and then I followed Richard Ritter into the glass residency. So I was aware of a kind of a lineage that way too.

Ken Carder discusses the high concentration of glass artists at Penland and in the surrounding area. Oral history interview with Ken Carder by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 6, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:00.

Ken Carder: The glass community, there was a large number of private studios in this area, you know, per capita, in relation to the population, there was probably no more—a higher concentration of glass artists in anywhere. And, as a young glass artist hungry to develop my own original ideas, but to be able to feed off of all these other people that are there also pursuing original ideas and developing techniques. It was extraordinary. I mean, it still is—the Penland area and Mitchell and Yancey County, North Carolina, I think are—I mean, it’s just, there’s a vast number of very creative people in that part of the world, you know, and it’s—you can you can trace most of that back to Penland School. I mean, it’s just—you’re talking generations deep now.

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?

Randall Grubb talks about Chris Buzzini’s contribution to torch working. Oral history interview with Randall Grubb by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, January 24, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:28.

Randall Grubb: So Chris, his history should really be based on his contribution to torch working, which is huge. I really think that although he’s an unbelievable lampworker, he never penetrated the market and never made a name like Paul [Stankard]. Chris was very good at building multiple layers. So here again—through playing with different techniques and pushing these techniques, it blurs the line between the two disciplines. Because oftentimes, you know, it almost takes an expert to determine which of these techniques is being used. And Chris, really, blurred the line with all of his, his personal Bridgeton Studio, that was the name of the studio that Chris had when he was in New Jersey, and then he went on to be one of the founding members of Orient & Flume in Chico, California, that was famous for the torchworking on the large vases and the beautiful, rich imagery that you can create that way. Chris was one of the pioneers, and then he brought it to Correia studios [Correia Art Glass, Santa Monica, California] at the same time. So looking honestly, retrospectively at his career, his contribution to the torch working world, because he cross pollinated and brought that torch to so many studios, and gave them the ability to do that imagery. That’s Chris’s legacy, in my opinion.

Randall Grubb talks about how he and Chris Buzzini had been attempting to make paperweights on their own. Oral history interview with Randall Grubb by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, January 24, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:06.

Randall Grubb: Chris had an inkling and we’d gotten a Carlisle CC burner so we could start to make these little tiny lampwork parts. So it was while Chris and I were both employed at Correia [Correia Art Glass, Santa Monica, California]. Chris had the knowledge. I had the desire and the ability to build equipment. So between the two of us, we—the two of us started down the path. And like I say, Chris didn’t have all the equipment, so I culled the equipment together. Like I said, the vacuum pump from my grandfather’s dental office is still the one that Chris used. So I’m going over to Chris’s house, and Chris is making these little lampwork parts, and I’m, and I’m looking over his shoulder and I’m going, ‘Yeah, I can make those too, probably.’ And then, we’re working on ‘em, and the very first paperweight that Chris made, I have, because we made it together. So we’re already independently going down the path of making lampwork paperweights. We’re already committed to the process. We just don’t have a perfected technique. And then all of a sudden, Paul announces that Penland is going to have Paul Stankard, and he’s gonna teach. Wow. Well, this is the—this is the final step. This is the—we’re going to get the critique, and we’re going to get to watch the master and our little problems—the little problems—our work—like I say, we’re making flowers, we’re putting them in, in glass balls, but they’ve got what looks like dew covering the flowers. And that dew is actually little tiny bubbles of air, due to the fact that the temperature wasn’t correct for the flower to have the clear glass put over it. This is a very subtle, subtle, subtlety within the technique, and it was Paul that when we went to that workshop, we saw—see Paul pick up a hand torch and warm up the set up right before he hits it with the glass. That was the only thing we weren’t doing. And his paperweights come out beautiful.

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.

Gary Beecham describes Paul Stankard’s paperweight-making process. Oral history interview with Gary Beecham by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 11, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:44.

Gary Beecham: You know, he would have that metal ring around the piece. And first he’d put in frit or whatever his background was, and then he’d put in whatever figures or floral elements went in. Then he would come over with some very hot glass and dump it on top of that, and that would encapsulate the figures. Then you get another gather over it. Then you narrow it down from the punty you’ve got it on, and stick it up on the base of the paperweight, and then you have to clean up the top of it for any tool marks or anything.

Ken Carder talks about the paperweight set-up Stankard demonstrated in his flameworking workshop. Oral history interview with Ken Carder by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 6, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:30.

Ken Carder: I mean, he was able to place these figures or things that he lampworked into this tray, or into the little cylinder there. And it had a—you know, you can see where the vacuum pump is attached to the bottom. And it was graphite, and the graphite was perforated with these holes of different sizes and things depending, I guess, on the complexity of the figure and the motif. And it was preheated, so it wouldn’t—the figurine or anything wouldn’t crack, so it was warmed up, so when he hit it with the hot glass it wouldn’t crack. And, you know, it was preheated. Looking at the dial there looks like it’s probably set at about four and a half, or something like that, maybe. I’m not sure. But anyways, he set it on this hot plate and preheated it, and then he took the glass and got it, you know, really hot and runny, and dropped it in there and hit the vacuum pump and it sort of vacuum packed the figure into the glass and it evacuated the vast majority of the air through the bottom. You know, it was sucked out.

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.

Randall Grubb talks about how tiny Paul Stankard’s flameworked elements actually are. Oral history interview with Randall Grubb by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, January 24, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:54.

Randall Grubb: Paul came from the scientific glassworking world, where you use Pyrex. And you hold, you know, a little bit of Pyrex, you know—half a pound of Pyrex in each hand, and you weld it together, and you make these fabulous scientific instruments out of it. Or, you know, Paul’s, you know, making these little tiny flowers, these little flower bouquets that we would make, the daisy is the size of your thumbnail. This is micro, little tiny stuff. Each petal is, you know, imagine, you know, a 25 petal daisy that fits on your thumbnail. Those are little tiny—each petal is teeny. And—very, very micro work. And then you take the top and bottom gathers that we would encase the lampwork with, it was a 400 gram top and a 150 gram bottom. So, you know, it wasn’t even two pounds of glass.

Ken Carder talks about being invited to work with Harvey Littleton. Oral history interview with Ken Carder by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 6, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 03:00.

Ken Carder: I went to school as an art student and didn’t get involved with glass until after I’d been in school on and off for a few years, and when I got interested in glass I had an opportunity actually to come down and work for Billy and Katie Bernstein—William and Katherine Bernstein for a summer kind of thing. So I left Bowling Green, Ohio and it came down to work for Billy and Katie as a apprentice, I guess you’d call it, and I worked there for three or four months, and before I was going to return back to Ohio, we went to Harvey’s studio to do cold working, because at the time a lot of the small studios, independent studios, around that part of North Carolina didn’t have really good cold shops for cutting and grinding. Everybody could blow glass but they didn’t have very good facilities for cutting and polishing and things. So a lot of people would go up to Harvey’s. Harvey was generous enough to let people come into his studio and use their cold shops. So Billy and I drove up about a half hour drive or so from where they lived over by Celo Lake [North Carolina]. We came up to Harvey’s studio to cold work and Harvey was was was in a ruckus about me wanting to get find a printmaker because his printmaker—he just started this process of printing off of glass plates was going to be leaving, and Billy introduced me and my last name is Carder, C-R-D-R, and Harvey got a big kick out of that because Frederick Carder was the gentleman that started Steuben and I think Harvey actually probably knew Fredrick Carder when Harvey was quite young. And he wanted to know what I knew about printmaking and I’d taken a couple printmaking classes, and I had done a lot of drawing so I knew a little bit about paper, so he hired me as a printmaker and this was huge because I had just gotten introduced to glass basically not much more than a year before, and I was really really interested to it and things, so the next thing I know I’m—you know, hired to work for Harvey Littleton, and I hadn’t even finish my undergrad degree and had only about a year or so experiencing glass—maybe just a little over a year, and then the next thing I know I’m in North Carolina working at Harvey’s studio and the printmaker ended up not leaving, so—her name was Sandy, Sandy Wilcox. She stayed and Harvey didn’t need two printmakers, so he put me in cold shop and then eventually into the hot shop, and I had some carpentry skills so I ended up being involved with building a new print studio, and that was this huge door that opened for me, because all of a sudden I’m working in Harvey’s studio and there’s these fantastic international visiting artists coming by to work and do prints and being in the hot shop, and it was close to proximity to Penland and there was a community of glass artists that were former residents at Penland: Mark Peiser and Katie and Billy Bernstein and Rob Levin and Steve Edwards and Harvey’s son John [Littleton] and daughter-in-law Kate [Vogel], you know, were in the area.