![](https://exhibitions.bgc.bard.edu/studioglasshistory/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Glancy.png)
Michael Glancy talks about going to Scandinavia to make his work.
1:23Micheal Glancy talks about going to Scandinavia to make his work. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:23.
Michael Glancy: I’m not sure what year that was, but I went on to go to Scandinavia because their tradition, unlike Venetian paper-thin tradition, is of a massive wall, and I needed that material to carve. And so I was attracted to that. Well, the Scandinavians work very slowly, because the mass—that’s how—you move at the speed of the glass itself, and if your glass body is much thicker, then it has an entirely different working range. And so the Scandinavians were viewed as slow and silent, really; they don’t talk a lot. And that can be misinterpreted, for whatever reason, probably because Benny [Benjamin Moore] was going to Venice, and Dale [Chihuly], too. They would bring a Venetian with them, and these Venetians were teaching Venetian glass techniques—which is very fast, and thin, and so there’s a—that’s the predominant tradition, European tradition in America, is Venetian-based.