Bob Banford, Victor Trabucco, and Gordon Smith discuss modern paperweight founder Charles Kaziun, and his son, focusing on the elder Kaziun’s secrecy. Oral history interview with Bob Banford by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, December 19, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Oral history interview with Victor Trabucco by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, September 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Oral history interview with Gordon Smith by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, November 26, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 07:45.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Bob Banford talks about Charles Kaziun using a torch in paperweight making. Clip length: 00:26.

Bob Banford: Charlie, as I said, was the first one to make our style paperweights where we did the entire process over a torch rather than having a glory hole and a tank of glass, we did the whole process over a torch, that later changing to some of the lampwork artists using a glory hole for a heat source, but still they bought glass already manufactured and used that to make their product.

Time stamp: 00:28
Clip 2: Bob Banford discusses Charles Kaziun. Clip length: 01:02.

Bob Banford: Well, I had the greatest respect for Charles Kaziun, the first man who made paperweights, that started the whole movement—the way—his use of color and design, very similar to the antique French. He also made crimped roses, which—crimped roses are a South Jersey, more or less a staple, the Millville Rose. It’s a crimp paperweight where they take a metal crimp and push it into the glass and push the color glass up into the paperweight—add leaves and things, and it’s a world famous paperweight, the Millville Rose, and he used to come to South Jersey to talk to fellows who made Millville Roses back, probably back in the thirties and stuff, but he came later in the fifties and sixties and some of these guys were still around. And it’s just, his work was always, oh, a favorite of mine because it was similar to the antique French work and that’s what I like.

Time stamp: 01:32
Clip 3: Bob Banford discusses Charles Kaziun III. Clip length: 00:19.

Bob Banford: Charles Kaziun, Junior [Charles Kaziun III] used to come to South Jersey and talk to some of the old glassblowers and learn different techniques, and he used to watch just anybody who was blowing glass, he’d be interested in watching. 

Time stamp: 01:55
Clip 4: Victor Trabucco reminisces about his relationship with Charles Kaziun. Clip length: 01:45.

Victor Trabucco: Yes, I actually, I got to be quite friendly with Charles [Kaziun]. Most guys didn’t really—he was very secretive, so most of the artists really didn’t talk with him. But I said I made a point to, to sit down with him and get to know him. And in fact when I first got Jean Melvin’s book [American Glass Paperweights and Their Makers…]. I remember calling him up and just talking to him about making a living with—making, doing art glass. And he just—he was encouraging. He just said, ‘Do your work, and work hard to get your techniques down, and your style.’ And so it was just a short conversation. But I was always very impressed with him. And so the first convention I went to was the Boston convention in, I think, ‘77. And that’s where I met him, and—but over the years, as I started to get involved in it, I would sit with him and talk. And he told me how he first got started. He was watching—and I had a very similar story—he was watching one of these lampworkers at the fair, and they started noticing him watching every day. And so they would turn the torch off as soon as they spotted him. So he still wanted to learn, and what he did is he got a job with—at the park there with somebody else that was directly across from them [laughs]. So he was there all day, so they had to turn their torch on eventually, and that’s how he used to watch them working. And I had exactly the same experience with one of these guys at the mall. He kind of noticed me. I had these sunglasses on, and I’d be watching him, and after a while he started noticing me coming back every day. And then he did the same thing. He would turn the torch off when I came around. So we had that in common, and we laughed about that.

Time stamp: 03:43
Clip 5: Victor Trabucco discusses Charles Kaziun’s secrecy. Clip length: 00:54.

Victor Trabucco: He [Charles Kaziun] was still very secretive, and he didn’t want to talk about what kind of glass he had, or torches or any of that stuff. But over the years he got to know me, and he would—I remember the first time he called me, and he started asking me questions, where could he get some different colored glasses? And I was very open with him, anything he asked me, I would tell him. And in fact, I even sold him some glass when he first wanted to try our glass from Schott Optical [Schott Optical, Duryea, Pennsylvania, now Schott Advanced Optics, a subsidiary of Schott AG, headquartered in Mainz, Germany]. And I sold him some of that. So I got to be pretty friendly with him, and that’s where it stood. So you could never ask him a question about what he—[laughs] I remember, I think I—one time I asked him what kind of torch he used, and he wouldn’t even talk [inaudible] and that’s almost like, you know, like asking a writer what kind of typewriter to use. I mean, it’s so generic [laughs] it didn’t really mean much, but he didn’t even want to answer that question. So I got a laugh out of that.

Time stamp: 04:42
Clip 6: Victor Trabucco relays a story about Charles Kaziun being interested in a lizard paperweight he made. Clip length: 01:19.

Victor Trabucco: But I can remember—I’ll tell you a story about Charlie Kaziun that was interested when I made that lizard. He really wanted to look at it, cause he was really blown away when I made that piece, and his son was always with him. And so, the one dealer told me, he said, ‘When you left, Charlie’s son came in—Charlie Jr., the third [III] he actually is—and he was taking all kinds of pictures of your lizard weight.’ So I heard about it, and I had one in my room, and I saw Charles Kaziun walking by my room. I said, ‘Charles, come in, come in here.’ And I put it right in his hands. And he was so uncomfortable, because he really wanted to look at it, but he didn’t want me to watch him looking at it so intensely. [laughs] He was so secretive, it was really funny. And it was the same thing with this morning glory weight that I made. Roger Jacobsen said, ‘You know, he was really looking at your work when you left.’ And then Charlie was—he came in, and he said to me, he said, ‘You’re—that morning glory you made is genius.’ [laughs] So that meant an awful lot to me—to a young glass artist, I’ll tell you.

Time stamp: 06:05
Clip 7: Gordon Smith talks about Charles Kaziun’s secrecy in paperweight making. Clip length: 01:40.

Gordon Smith: I can tell you a story. Charlie Kaziun Senior and Jim and Nontas Kontes, the guys that were my mentors were very good friends, they were about the same age, and they were well into their sixties when I met ‘em. And even though they were best of friends, Charlie would never tell them anything. And Jim and Nontas, vice versa decided, well, we’re not going to share anything with Charlie either, and Jim and Nontas I remember them telling me a funny story that they were on the phone with Charlie once, cause Charlie lived up in New England and the Kontes Brothers lived in South Jersey. And Nontas told me, he said, ‘We talked to Charlie for about an hour and a half one day, and after we hung up the phone, Jim and I realized that he did nothing but ask us questions and we told him everything. We answered every question and he never told us a thing.’ It was kind of how Charlie was. Charlie had a way of being very secretive, yet you couldn’t help but like him. I loved the guy. I met him, in fact, when I gave my first talk ever, it happened to be in New England, and I met Charlie and his son. And in fact he complimented me. He came up to me and he said, ‘I don’t know how you get anything done that you do and keep a shop looking so clean.’ Cause I had photos of my studio, and he said, ‘It looks like you never work in there.’ And I just said, you know, I was a young kid. I said, ‘I thought you had to keep things nice, neat and clean or for, you know, your work would be dirty.’ And he said, ‘You’re right.’ He said, ‘You’re doing the right thing.’