A graduate of the Royal college of Art and the first of his kind within the UK’s “Studio Glass Movement” to open his own Glassmaking studio in 1972… Later In 1977, when I was 5 years old, he took me to the cinema to see “Capricorn One”- which sent me on down the road to the land of Tin Foil Hat…where I live today… In The Making - Glass-Blowing - George Elliott - YouTube
Thanks for sharing. I’ll finish watching it later. I had the pleasure of watching a glass blower ply his trade about 20 years ago in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Unfortunately the company was another victim of the plandemic. Is your father still in the ‘blowing glass’ art/trade?
A fond farewell.
https://novascotiancrystal.com/
No, he died back in 1998, 25 years ago this month(“Doctor error”)… which is why I was thinking about him… He also taught it at Art college for 25 years, so is responsible for successive generations of Designer Glassmakers…
6 Likes
I’m sorry to hear that. 
Wow, that would be a movie to do it, especially for a five year old, obviously left quite an impression. I remember the movie because at the time I had a job in our local movie theater as a projectionist. I also remember seeing the first moon landing on television and assumed it too was faked. No way could everything go so perfect as landing on the moon and then us “home movies”. I’d already seen plenty of Flash Gordon episodes on TV.
Sorry about loosing your father so early in life. I bet he was one heck of a cool dude.
6 Likes
I was pleasantly surprised on opening the link to realize I had watched this before. What a talented man, his work is unique and gorgeous! Thanks so much for sharing this, I am sorry you lost him so young.
1 Like
I used to watch the old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon episodes on morning TV in the 1970’s…My Dad went to see the same ones at the Cinema in the late 1930’s… We both really enjoyed the 1980 film version…brilliantly camp & charming, laughed our heads off…
3 Likes
First David I want to say I’m sorry for your loss. Your father seemed such an interesting man. To have the patience for the highs and lows but as he said he keeps going back. As for Capricorn One, I just watched this last week and still find this movie timeless. I can see how that would open a young boys mind let a lone adults. My first AHA moment is when I watched Chariot of the Gods (1970) with my father. He was always calculating planetary alignments and light years with his scientific pocket calculator. I have been inquisitive ever since. Thanks for sharing.
3 Likes
Only a glassblower can ever truthfully state, “…but I never inhaled.” .
6 Likes
Well, he was at home and it was quick and clean- my Mother and I were with him as it happened…and it’s been a quarter of a century since…I suppose 65 was rather young but he crammed a lot into those years… Still, it was definitely the beginning of my skepticism toward the medical profession…
3 Likes
David, thank you for sharing this film about your father. We enjoyed watching him at work, his mode of concentration, his creativity, and how he regarded and dealt with “mistakes”. You are very blessed to have had an artist as a parent – your youth would have been anything but “conventional”, which serves you well in this messy world.
Kind of you to say, and yes- both parents were at Art school, that’s where they met…and luckily both of them were thoroughly down to earth and without pretension…
1 Like
Good video about your papa he seems like a good artist.
1 Like
Thanks for presenting that lovely video. We have a glass studio not far from here and you remind me that I should go back to watch again. Working in anything 3-D which requires shaping, yin-yang, requires skill and glass is definitely over the top. A friend is an iron worker, makes these elaborate feather-like patterns in the steel by heating, folding, pounding, repeat hundreds to thousands of folds. Absolutely magical when it is converted to something else, like a knife. Your father inspires me to suggest (design) even more “things” made with this magic. I believe I am probably about his age in the video so it makes me angry to be reminded of so many people who died at the hands of people who are just practicing.
2 Likes
Well, it was 1975 so he was 42 at the time of filming and had another 23 years left to go…very full years though, right up until about 3 weeks before he died. Quality not quantity is perhaps the measure of it…
2 Likes
Looks like he had a lot of skill glass is one of more difficult materials to work with.
Much easier than sculpting hot glass like the way he did there is sand casting, I made a sand casting of my face in art school just had to hold my breath for a couple minutes for people to pack the sand in, then use torch to make a layer of soot on the sand and then pour in molten glass with a ladle.
Don’t have access to a glass shop right now but could be good to do more sand casting or kiln forming, with a kiln you don’t need to have a molten glass cauldron just set up plates of glass to melt partially and form in kiln firing like ceramics.
1 Like
Yes, casting is a simpler method and doesn’t require the long and somewhat torturous process of learning to work molten glass with hand tools. My father originally trained at the Royal college of art as a designer in the late 1950’s, then worked as a designer for five or so years before branching off into teaching. It was while teaching in 1965 that he met a man called Sam Herman who’d brought a new method called “Studio glass” over from the US-(One man,Designer&Maker, small studio)- previously designers and glassblowers were two separate entities. So effectively my dad had to build his own studio(Furnace,Kiln & tooling) and teach himself to blow glass… By about 1968 he was up and running(the first to do so in the UK),- while also still teaching at college. Glass making is an exhausting and precarious kind of work, while also being an art form…and takes quite a physical toll on the body, so to have an almost 30 year run is pretty good all told…
2 Likes