Back in 2000  (about the time we realized that the Y2K bug was not going to end civilization), I started making pens from exotic wood and antler.  After all, with the world clearly not about to end, it was time to find a new activity that required me to buy more stuff.  After all, giving into materialistic urges is just another way of being patriotic.  So I bought a lathe, pen kits, sanders, finishing waxes, a drill press, yada yada.  Everything the catalogs said I needed…I bought. 

I was overcome by dabbler’s delirium.

Make-stuff mania.

Hobbyist heat. 

And it wasn’t the first time.  

There have been so many obsessions (and so much money spent) over many years.  Stained glass.  Candles.  Origami.  Photography.  Insect taxidermy. 

(Okay, I made the last one up.  I think.  It is all really such a blur.  But in 2000 I was definitely in my “pen period”.  Definitely.)

At the same time, a friend of mine was flameworking - making gorgeous glass beads in a torch.  In addition to putting them on jewelry, she was putting them on pens.  Only the pens were made of plastic and seemed cheap compared to the beads.  So she asks me if I could make a better pen for her beads.

Challenged extended.

Challenge accepted.

A few googles later and I landed on warmglass.com, the original online home to glass fusers. 

I looked at a few forum postings and, while I was pretty sure it was in English (unless the word ”bubble” was leading a secret life with a different meaning in another language?) I had no idea what anyone was talking about.  I looked at a tutorial.  I visited the advertisers.  I ordered Brad’s book.  Hmm…this looks interesting.  Then I browsed the site’s artist gallery and came across this:

Dismantled Angel by Robert Leatherbarrow

The hell with bead pens.  How did the artist (Bob Leatherbarrow of Calgary) make this?

What?  He made it from glass…in a kiln??  What is a glass fusing kiln and, more importantly, do they sell them at Michael’s or Hobby Lobby?

And so started a six month obsession reading every single post in the warmglass.com archives.

And Karen, my poor wife, could only sit back and watch while thinking “here we go again.”  And, damn, if this hobby didn’t look really, really expensive.

Expensive?  Neither of us had any idea.

To be continued…