San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, CA

Thursday, 20. June 2013

Along Highway route 1 all the way to Seattle is our goal for the coming weeks; there will be plenty of stops along the way. Before we made our way to LA for the highway, we briefly stopped at Joe Cariati’s studio. Unfortunately he had already finished making glass for the day, but that meant he had time to chat. Joe makes very beautiful pieces; simple in design and colour, very thinly blown and formed close to technical perfection. It would have been really interesting for us to have seen him in action. He is in the top league of glass makers in America, even Apple think he is so great that they have his pieces on their homepage.

At our next stop we found the complete opposite. The stop in Harmony, California’s smallest town, with the official number of inhabitants given as 18, was unplanned and spontaneous. From the highway, we had spotted the sign to a studio. But we only met three of the inhabitants while we were there. When we entered the studio we thought everything was a good copy of Jiri Pacinek’s work, a Czech who we visited in October. On closer inspection, we realised that they were actually his horse heads, as he had briefly worked in this studio a year ago. The owner of the studio, Erick Dandurand was just as spontaneous as our decision to stop, and prepared a second working space for us. Over two days we made drinking glasses for him. He sells everything a glass-lover desires: glass files, pens, magnets, pumpkins, picture frames, beads, rings, tableware and recycled glass, as well as bigger sculpture, like those of Jiri Pacinek. He runs courses and every now and again hosts visiting glassmakers from other countries, who make pieces in his studio he can then sell. We have hardly ever seen such a range of glass products on sale; I am sure I have forgotten to list something.

Back on the highway to San Francisco we also found the Lundberg glass studio, where seven glass makers produce Art Nouveau glass. As it was a Sunday they weren’t working but we could take a look at their workshop, located in a former bakery. It looked like something we had seen in Italy.

Our next contact is Ari Metz who works for Nicolas Weinstein, who produces very impressive glass sculptures in San Francisco. These sculptures are mostly constructed from clear glass tubes held together with wire, reaching enormous proportions. They are fixed to the ceilings in a number of buildings, where they can be seen in all their glory. The city has also made quite an impression on us over the last three days, but now we’re heading back to the road.Along Highway route 1 all the way to Seattle is our goal for the coming weeks; there will be plenty of stops along the way. Before we made our way to LA for the highway, we briefly stopped at Joe Cariati’s studio. Unfortunately he had already finished making glass for the day, but that meant he had time to chat. Joe makes very beautiful pieces; simple in design and colour, very thinly blown and formed close to technical perfection. It would have been really interesting for us to have seen him in action. He is in the top league of glass makers in America, even Apple think he is so great that they have his pieces on their homepage.