Mark Peiser talks about his interest in flameworking and his suggestion that Paul Stankard come to Penland to give his workshop. Oral history interview with Mark Peiser by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 03:03.

Mark Peiser: Harvey Littleton had a show of glass at the Art Institute in Chicago [The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois] in—I forget when, sixty-five or something. I just happened to see him at the Art Institute in Chicago. In the same room was a display case with some work of a woman graduate student, I think, at the Art Institute who had done some flamework forms. And these—they were all little small things and I thought they were wonderful, I just was really intrigued by these little pieces. So that was before I even got into glass that was sort of in my mind. When I went out to CCAC [California College of the Arts, Oakland, California], to Marvin’s [Marvin Lipofsky’s] thing in the early seventies, a fellow came up to me and—wearing a suit, and said he had a flameworking business—did technical glassworking in Oakland, I guess or somewhere a little ways away, and was I interested or something like that. So I went over and saw it—I had no idea what that was about, and I was, again, just blown away, there were—there were like these racks of all different little condenser tubes and pipettes—I don’t know what they are, but all these different little glass forms and I thought, ‘Oh man, you could make such a ‘thing’ out all this stuff,’ you know? Just put it together. I went back, I talked to Marvin Lipofsky, you know, I said ‘Hey, I met this guy, I can’t remember his name.’ He says ‘Ah, yeah that guy, he keeps hanging around, you know?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, flamework and stuff, eh, blah blah blah.’ Anyways, somewhere along the way I met Paul Stankard and I was, again, just blown away by what he was doing and—boy, you know, and we talked and I—there was—that’s when I was doing the paperweight bases and people kinda drew a connection between the two, though—well, I guess maybe there is, sort of, but anyway, I was a big fan of his and I did, you know, ask him if he’d be interested in doing something at Penland [Penland School of Craft, Bakersville, North Carolina] and, you know, and he said, ‘No I don’t—,’ He—apparently he’d been given kind of a cold shoulder by the studio glass movement and, anway, I went to talk to whoever at Penland and, yeah, they went for it. And, yeah, was—he came down and, you know, and that was really happy he did, and, first of all, just to see how he did it. You know? And, anyway, yeah, that’s kind of how he got there.