Scientific glassblower continues century-old campus tradition (2021)
chemistry.berkeley.edu
chemistry.berkeley.edu
https://www.cavemanchemistry.com
EDIT: I was once surprised to learn that a glass artist friend knew a great deal about borosilicate, until I figured out that while he was proud of his art glass, he was paying his bills via the craft of glass products intended for consumption of tobacco and legal herbs only.
Frankly pipes and bongs are much easier and don't have the same health and safety liabilities as bad dragon glasswares.
(the link being by way of Chihuly/Pilchuck; her father spent 5 years at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaux-Arts_de_Paris which probably didn't hurt...)
EDIT: https://linotagliapietra.com/artwork/tasmania is an excellent material shadow of Hesse's glass bead game. The reticello uses cane laid down upon independent axes, a wedge product of canes if you will, and then this work layers those in the remaining spatial dimension —alongside the bubble as neutral element? or dreamtime?— to produce an aesthetic effect evoking its namesake.
If we were playing the gbg with textual quotations instead of murrine, one might almost imagine this work as proceeding in a Hegelian manner: the first axis of cane as thesis, the second axis as antithesis, and the perpendicular excursion as synthesis?
I remember my first visit fondly, as the glass blower helped narrow in on a more simple design using mostly “standard” tubes, and then eagerly agreed to build the one custom piece. I came back a day or two later and the result was perfect.
This was at UMich circa ~2012.
A while ago I watched a longer, more in depth video on the same topic (spoiler for video title) by Angela Collier. Can recommend, she has a pleasant style and goes really in depth.
That's beautiful.
If you're going to do science like art it's good to have a blank canvas standing by at all times in addition to whatever pieces may already be present in the studio, whether unfinished or undergoing restoration.
The more unique and diverse the pallette of materials you have at your fingertips, and the more you sharpen your skills at utilizing them, the more likely the outcome will be something worthwhile never seen before.
So any time you get a wild idea, you have a place to at least give it a little try, or when others who are needy declare an art emergency, you've got a place where you can step right up to the plate and hit it out of the park.
In the chemical instrumentation lab, some invention needs to be done from time to time anyway, might as well make it easier on yourself by having an "invention bench" standing by. Eventually when you have experienced the occasional cool thing coming off the bench, you don't even need an idea. Just belly up to that bench, and you come up with more ideas than you could ever execute in a lifetime. Mostly beyond your immediate pallette of resources or single-handed ability, but it really can only take seconds to mentally go down that list until you hit the things that don't tick those two boxes.
Then something interesting starts to appear on that blank canvas.
Go ahead and make it look easy, Bob Ross would be proud :)