Mary Shaffer talks about the camaraderie in the developing studio glass movement. Oral history interview with Mary Shaffer by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 21, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:11.

Mary Shaffer: I mean nobody had been in a hot glass shop before, and so when you went in, there’s this huge noise and all the air and everything like that, it was just energy—and everybody was young and it was like, everybody was just running in all these different directions like Karla Trinkley and all these early people that you can probably see in that original book, the Corning [The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York] show in ‘79. You know, everybody was just trying different stuff. [Jon] Kuhn was making little rocks—you know? Everybody was just having fun and nobody was stepping on anybody’s toes or really copying anybody so—because of course, I didn’t know Sydney Cash’s wire work—so anyhow, there were some—a little bit of copying, but not really. Everybody was fresh. And huge energy and so much fun. I mean, I was at a show in—what was it, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and I was going down the escalator and Marvin Lipofsky was going up the other side. And he yells at me, ‘Mary, would you come to California and talk to my students?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ you know. And so everybody was so open—and Joel Philip Myers who made these beautiful little black vases—invited me out to talk to students and I talked to so many—like John Luebtow, I don’t know if you know who that is, but he’s a sculptor that works with glass. I mean, I talked to him when he was a student. But he wasn’t at RISD, and I talked to Steven Weinberg—and to his other friend, [William] Carlson. They were both students—and I went out and lectured to them and showed them my work and talked to them, and talked to them about their work. They were students when I met them. So I was moving all around doing that, but it was so open—everybody was sharing, everybody was open, everybody was intermingling. And I think glass—GAS—the Glass Arts Society conferences. I think it’s still that way. Young people recognize each other, they know each other, they work together. You know, it’s fantastic. I mean, and it’s so open, and that was really what was going on way back then.