Glassblowing by hand might seem like a dying art, yet it is thriving: Studios and universities offer popular classes, and glass art is widely exhibited and sold. Amateur and professional glassblowers alike are captivated by the choreography of fire, smoke, and molten material. Why are people drawn to this ancient craft? What is distinctive about the social, physical, and intellectual experience of glassblowing? How does the body learn an art?
In Fire Craft, Erin E. O'Connor interweaves an immersive firsthand account of her experiences learning to blow glass with a sensuous ethnography of embodiment and community among glassblowers. Through compelling stories, such as her struggle to produce an elegant goblet, she shows how a novice becomes hooked by and committed to a craft. Reflecting on embodied knowledge, O'Connor considers how we negotiate mistakes and failures, how we strive to develop proficiency in the face of shortcomings, and how through making objects we make meaning. She also explores the history of glassblowing and how various social, environmental, and knowledge frameworks shape the valorization of craft. From the furnaces of empire to the hot bodies of collaboration and love, O'Connor reveals the interconnectedness of the body with the elemental world. A gripping tale of the social world and experience of glassblowing, Fire Craft passionately defends practical labor as intellectual work that changes self and society.
By:
Erin E. O’Connor
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9780231218443
ISBN 10: 0231218443
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 12 August 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface Introduction: Arriving at New York Glass 1. The Glassy State: Setting the Pot of Man and World 2. Embodied Knowledge: The Ebbs and Flows of Skill Acquisition 3. Fire and Sweat: Calorific Bodies and Teamwork 4. Blow: Time, Space, and the Vessel 5. Quintessential Craft: Cup Making and the Turns of Mêtis 6. Materia Erotica: Love and Strife in the Hotshop Conclusion: Heart of Glass Acknowledgments Glossary Notes Bibliography Index
Erin E. O’Connor is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Politics and Human Rights at Marymount Manhattan College. She is a recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research at the Corning Museum of Glass.
Reviews for Fire Craft: Art, Body, and World Among Glassblowers
Fire Craft is a long-awaited response to the lack of critical and high-level academic discussions in the glass craft field. From the perspective of the practitioner, this book argues beautifully for the act of making as a transformative process of both personal becoming and world-making, that is relevant far beyond the craft discourse. -- Camilla Groth, coauthor of <i>Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective</i> This book makes a unique and important contribution to our understanding of craft and embodied knowledge. O’Connor’s long apprenticeship as a glassblower has endowed her with firsthand knowledge and expertise, and her careful reflections on her personal learning trajectories as a maker enrich both her ethnographic storytelling and theoretical analyses. -- Trevor H. J. Marchand, author of <i>The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work: Craftwork in Twenty-First Century England</i>
