Henry Halem discusses learning how to build furnaces. Oral history interview with Henry Halem by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 3, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:27.

Henry Halem: And so we were all very friendly, and we would all get together with this organization called the Glass Arts Society, which I helped found, and we shared what we knew. And that’s how we started to grow. It was not only about making art or glass or what have you, but how to build furnaces and so on. And I was very good with the furnace building because I came out of this ceramic background, and had actually made a living for a short time building kilns, roll out kilns for potters. And I did that for a while, and then when I went with Harvey [Littleton] I built his furnaces for a while, and then when I got my job I started building furnaces here and would demonstrate to people how to build a furnace, albeit they were very crude. And Nick [Dominick] Labino was very important in that because he showed me some tricks, he lived down the road from me, and I would go visit him, and he showed me how to make this crazy little three-way articulated door for a furnace. And so that’s how things grew. We just kinda taught each other. I mean, there was really nobody showing us anything. I mean Harvey didn’t really know much, and we passed him as far as techniques were concerned very quickly.