Gary Beecham discusses making a group paperweight at the flameworking workshop.

01:28
Gary Beecham

Gary Beecham discusses making a group paperweight at the flameworking workshop. Oral history interview with Gary Beecham by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 11, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:28.

Gary Beecham: Also, we made a class paperweight. Where everybody made components and laid it all out, and I went and got—I think either a ladle of glass or a very large gather to pour over everything. And made this big—we dropped it into I think a steel mold, like a rectangular mold, and then just left that the way it was, as that big thick rectangle. And that got annealed. Anyway, Paul was fascinated with the possibility of that, so some years later he was teaching at Corning. And I went up—we taught the course together, and it was about doing lampworked figures or scenes and then casting a block of glass on top of that. Or casting a block of glass on either side. You know, he was fascinated by that concept of making a large piece with the figures in it, not just a precious little paperweight.