Jane Bruce discusses teaching glass to Paul DeSomma at Ohio University. Oral history interview with Jane Bruce, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:38.

Jane Bruce: Paul DeSomma was a student of mine when I was at—when I left Alfred; when I left England, I went to Alfred for two years and then I went to Ohio for four years. When I was at Alfred, I met—one of the grad students at Alfred was a guy called George Johnson, who was Paul DeSomma’s brother-in-law at the time; they are not anymore. George is married to Paul’s sister. Anyway, when I went to Ohio one day out of the blue I had this phone call from Paul DeSomma saying, ‘I’m George’s brother-in-law. I want to learn glass and he said I should come and learn it with you.’ So I said, ‘Okay, fine.’ So a year later he did actually come down and he was at OU [Ohio University, Athens, Ohio] for probably two years. And they had a program—the university had a program that if you lived in Athens, you could take a class for 10 dollars for the semester. I don’t think they do it anymore. You didn’t get credit or anything, but you could take a class. If you were a resident in the town, you could take a class for $10. So I had a bunch of kids who were local, or like Paul, who—and I had some of the university students as well, but I had one, two, three, four, including Paul, who were just taking the $10 class and all they wanted was glass. They weren’t really enrolled in the university. And Paul was one of them, and Paul became my assistant. And then when I moved from Ohio to New York, Paul also moved to New York. And then he was my assistant in New York, at Mulberry Street, for about a year I think. And then Dale Chihuly came with his team—Billy Morris, Larry Jassey, I think it was Billy, Larry, Charlie Parriott, and Dale came, and they needed—I was on staff and sort of vaguely organizing it, and they said, ‘Well, we need a couple more assistants.’ And I said to Paul, I said, ‘You’re going to be one of their assistants,’ and he said, ‘Oh no, I can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, you are.’ Well, that was the end of my assistant because Billy loved him and they invited him to Seattle and I then had to find a new assistant. Which I did, and found a really great assistant, so—another great assistant. But that’s who Paul is, so.