Glass class

By Dharshani Dharmawardena Daily Bruin Contributor

In recent years, the growing popularity of glass art has spawned
previously unavailable programs aimed at teaching the trade in
higher educational facilities nationwide, infusing an ancient art
and trade with modern technology.

Like many schools, UCLA has also begun to explore the field with
its course Chemistry 210, Scientific Glassblowing.

According to Ric Kaner, vice chairman for education in the
chemistry and biochemistry department, the course was offered
informally each quarter during the 1998-99 school year and has
continued this year for credit as well. Students can enroll in the
1-unit class, taught by Aniceto DeCastro, next fall and spring.

Joseph Mansour, a third-year physics student, took the class
last fall. He said the beginning course lacked the stress
associated with most classes and led many students to ask for more
instruction on the subject.

"I really do wish they would offer intermediate or advanced
classes because we just learned the basics," Mansour said.

In the class, students learned how to repair test tubes and to
fix glass cracks. As the course progressed, DeCastro showed
students how to polish the end of a rod for stirring and how to cut
glass. Because many of the students were science majors, learning
to repair glass equipment had practical value.

Mansour added that he learned that one needed to "cooperate"
with the glass when creating pieces.

"A lot of the time, you try to control the glass," he said.
"It’s more about letting gravity work and how to work with the
flame."

As long as DeCastro, an expert glassblower, is willing to
instruct the class and students show interest, the department will
offer the course well into the future, Kaner said.

Glass art – including hand-blown glass and stained glass pieces
– has created such a high demand because collectors are reaching
deeper into their pockets to pay for unique work, according to
Adamm Gritlefeld, owner of Adamm’s Stained Glass and American Craft
Gallery in Santa Monica.

"Because people are willing to pay, artists have a chance to be
especially creative," Gritlefeld said.

Glass art, especially blown glass, began gaining popularity in
ancient times.

Although people began working with glass around 2000 B.C.,
glassblowing itself developed in the Roman Empire during the first
century B.C.

According to the Terra Jewelers History of Roman Glass and
Glassblowing Web site, shaping molten glass by fixing it to a
blowpipe and inflating the glass allowed stained glass craftsmen to
transcend size and shape limitations imposed by more archaic
techniques. These techniques included casting (forming glass in a
mold) or core forming (creating an object by gathering molten glass
around a core).

As glass blowers familiarized themselves with the process, they
could afford to sell many more coveted pieces once only available
to the rich. For the Roman craftsmen, creating pitchers and goblets
offered artistic license in addition to creating practical
utensils.

In more modern times, economic crises have caused production of
glass art to dwindle. Many living during the Great Depression
called working with glass a "lost art."

Gritlefeld, however, said he sees it as more of an evolving art
that never truly disappeared.

"It was lost in that not many people were doing it," he said.
"But, like art, it’s always changing and we’re relearning
things."

To begin the process of glass blowing, a craftsman tips a blow
pipe into a furnace stocked with molten glass, attaching a gather
of the substance at the tip of the pole.

He then rolls the gather into a cone at a flat metal, marble or
graphite plate that cools the surface of the glass to enable the
craftsman to inflate it.

By breathing into the pipe, the worker blows a bubble in the
glass. He can then add more gathering to the object and molds it
further.

"Yanking and swinging the blowpipe back and forth will elongate
(the object)," Gritlefeld said. "You have to constantly rotate the
pole."

To shape the lips of the piece, the craftsman attaches the
object to a solid rod with a hollow or solid shaft, after it has
been reheated in another furnace.

Finally, after removing the object from the rod, the craftsman
places it in a controlled temperature oven to cool gradually, which
prevents cracking. Depending on the elaborateness of the piece,
craftsmen use various methods and techniques to form their
works.

Gritlefeld, who mainly creates custom-made stained glass pieces
for homes, has delved in glass art for nearly thirty years. Unlike
blowing glass, creating stained glass remains less complicated.

After creating a pattern of a big drawing called a cartoon, a
stained glass craftsman essentially uses it as a template to cut
different colored glass with the aid of a glass- cutter. He then
fuses the glass together with lead using a soldering iron.

"You build it up pretty much like a jigsaw puzzle," Gritlefeld
said.

Gritlefeld said that many of the customers who visit him ask for
contemporary designs, which include free form and asymmetrical
lines intersecting with many free form colors. Gritlefeld created
one such design for a hotel in Japan.

Traditional stained glass, on the other hand, include more
uniform patterns or a floral type of design. Although Gritlefeld
designs stained glass for private homes, he has also done work in
synagogues, restaurants and even Kerckhoff Hall.

Although he can name no one aspect of his work as "the best,"
Gritlefeld said he finds creating art that everyone enjoys
extremely gratifying.

"Making beautiful things and making things that’ll last for
generations is very rewarding," he said.

While technology has created specialized equipment that can
mass-produce stained glass for less money, Gritlefeld still makes
his pieces by hand, preserving the age-old trade.

"There will always be a market for inexpensive stained glass,"
he said. "But I’ve been (hand-cutting) since the ’70s and have no
problem."

In fact, Gritlefeld said that technology can help traditional
craftsmen artistically.

"That same machinery is used to do impossible cuts," he said.
"It helps artists be more creative."