Gordon Smith speaks about live demonstrations at Wheaton and criticism from other paperweight artists. Oral history interview with Gordon Smith by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, November 26, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:48.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Gordon Smith talks about the criteria for being chosen to give a demo at Wheaton. Clip length: 00:35.

Gordon Smith: They had asked me to do a demonstration in the factory. They normally do—they’ll ask any of the artists that might—you know, just to see if any have an interest leading up to those conventions. For instance, I already know now that I’m giving a demonstration at the next one. So they usually plan out about a year in advance and they ask a few artists, ‘Are you interested in giving a talk or giving a live demonstration?’ And they approached me. And Johne [Parsley] and I had been doing things together, so they thought we could come up with something interesting to do.

Time stamp: 00:37
Clip 2: Gordon Smith explains that the Paperweight Weekend demos are open to the public. Clip length: 00:48.

Gordon Smith: I can tell you that every convention at Wheaton Village is not only paperweight collectors and dealers that fly in for the weekend from all over the world, but also, since Wheaton Village is a facility that’s open to the public, when those live demonstrations are going on in the factory, the public is also welcome to come in and look at them going on, since that’s just a daily happening at the village, it’s pretty much every day of the year. So they get the benefit, just by chance, if they happen to come through Wheaton Village on the weekend of a convention, whether they know it or not, they get the benefit of seeing some of the top paperweight makers in the world doing demonstrations and showing techniques and what we do.

Time stamp: 01:28
Clip 3: Gordon Smith discusses public perceptions of paperweight demos. Clip length: 00:42.

Gordon Smith: To be honest, anybody that was just a lay person coming through there, I don’t think they had any idea at the value of what they were seeing being done. Not only the rarity of the fact that pretty much every top flamework paperweight maker in the country, and in some cases the world—cause even at some of those conventions, some of the makers from Europe would fly over as well. But I don’t think the lay person had any idea that they were seeing such a rare group of people doing such a rare art form, and showing such rare techniques. I don’t think they had any idea.

Time stamp: 02:13
Clip 4: Gordon Smith discusses being criticized by other paperweight artists for giving demonstrations early in his career. Clip length: 00:35.

Gordon Smith: I can remember taking a little bit of heat from other paperweight makers because I came in and I just was the new guy and I didn’t understand just how much these guys liked to keep a stranglehold on what we did. And I set up all my stuff to demonstrate, and some of them—I don’t think they liked it. They didn’t like seeing the fact that I was pretty much just exposing all these secrets to the public, and it bothered them. And I remember hearing it from a couple of them.