It’s only been a couple of days since I had an old friend stop in to see me while I was busy in the shop preparing glass to load into my forming ovens. He commented that I “looked fantastic” and that “I hadn’t seemed to slow down at all over the years.” My explanation was [...]

I had just left an architects office after a lunch and learn. The food (bar-b-que, sweet and spicy) was well received, and the advance warning had drawn 50 interiors people. There were a ton of questions after the newly tweaked PowerPoint-set-to-pop-music slideshow had toes tapping and heads bobbing for the course of the colorful, fast-paced [...]

I’ve been a musician all my life and someone who puts words of my choosing into familiar melodies, mostly for comedy (don’t look at me like that; advertisers have done it for years.) I’ve always thought it was a funny thing to do, and sometimes it’s hilarious (don’t ask my Mrs., she hates when I [...]

At a recent conference in Atlanta I was lucky enough to attend the decorative glass seminar, where a distinguished colleague spoke with reference to the interface between those parties in the chain of design to placement (or concept to creation), specifically where an open dialogue between specifier and provider is critical. It should be noted [...]

It goes without saying that in this day and age of fast information exchange technology that you have to be aware of what you say and to whom you say it, because you never know how quickly the wrong impression can reach unintended ears. Combine that thought with the idea that if you do something [...]

It occurs to me that a long time ago, when I recognized that I could look upon the field of decorative glass as a “competitive arena,” that I made some assumptions about the approach some of the others were taking to marketing product. To a point, I was critical of the fact that some parties [...]

I was thinking (my wife says that’s when things get dangerous) about just how frequently glass or reference thereto is a part of my day. Most of the time it’s just talking about work, specifically product ideas, but I got interested in how it’s used for reference by non-vitro-ites, and decided to assemble my findings. [...]

One of the most common questions I get asked is “Hey, do you ever cut yourself?” The question is often asked as if to establish some element of danger or risqué about an avocation as a “glass-man.” Of course, while I am tempted to describe some horrific breach of my outer shell facilitated by an [...]

I wonder if my crazy art glass background is where I get some of my skewed Stew views. It stretches back to post college days working in a 3-person stained glass shop doing mostly commercial and religious commissions. Following were several (we’ll call them) internships at big production studios and a continuing glass education.My last [...]

It’s ironic how my exposure to decorative glass as a child has impacted what I do as an adult. I remember being captivated by the glass crystals employed by one Hayley Mills (British actress) in the movie Pollyanna, when she made and sold “rainbow makers” at a fair that were made from pendants taken from [...]