Author: Erich Moraine

Symposium Registration Registrations continue to trickle in. I want to encourage all of you to get signed up. Rates go up 20% June 1st. Video presentations continue to come in. I just got a commitment from Ryan Fitt to build a Toffolo style goblet as interpreted by Ryan. I’m very curious to see what that might be. I’m deep into editing the Allan Brown double coil distillation head recorded by Kyle Meyer. Right after that comes the convert a soft glass electrode to boro by Aaron Kirchhoff. There are several more after that. It’s going to be a good symposium. Consider attending. Register here. Art Auction New items are coming in and we could use a lot more. It’s now viewable with a countdown clock to when it opens. Take a look at the offerings here. If you’d like to contribute something to the auction look at the bottom of this page for links to upload your item. 2027 Budget At the most recent Board meeting the board approved a budget for 2027! For the past few years there wasn’t a budget of any kind. Historically we’ve been $15- $20k in the year after year. Because of the hard work Kevin Moeller, Don Gossard, and I did, it is not quite a balanced budget but comes within striking distance of being one. This is an accounting document and not easy to interpret, but in pursuing my interest of transparent governance, it is available for Members to see on the reports page. We’re not out of the financial woods yet but have made great progress. I’m proud of the board and of what we’ve accomplished, and there’s more to be done, and it’s OK to celebrate a move in the correct direction. Fusion Back issues The last of the missing back issues have been found and loaded to Dropbox. Don is working on getting them posted into the Fusion library area. When those 12? are uploaded we will, for the first time, have a complete set of Fusions for all members to make use of as a benefit of membership in the ASGS. They are already available for free as a download. As Don converts the old files into ones Lulu can use they will be available for purchase as printed bound copies mailed to your door. This file conversion will likely take months to complete. In the meantime read them online, download them digitally, or print them out at home on your printer. E. L. WHeeler’s book titled “Scientific Glassblowing” is still the gold standard for technical reference books about methods and techniques for our trade. It’s been in and out of print for years. (There happens to be a pristine copy in the Art Auction this year donated by Bob Ponton.) Because of some digging by Don Gossard we’ve discovered that Salem Community College was gifted the rights to publish this book by Mr. Wheeler around 2012. Since then it’s been reprinted once and is again out of print. Read More …

Art Auction The auction continues to be open and ready for you to send your items. For the first time ever, I’ve had the courage to submit something. I put in a martini glass I made a few years ago that was sitting around collecting dust. I was surprised at how easy it was easy to submit. Here’s a link with instructions Scroll to the bottom to read the simple details. As a teaser here’s a pic of my glass. I bet you can do better than I did. Send something in, I dare you. We need submissions. Symposium planning The schedule is slowly gelling. I now have content from 9 of the 16 presenters. We’ve zoomed past several deadlines for submission. I’m hoping that the next (and final) deadline will do the trick and get folks to send in their recordings. Without them we have no symposium.  Video Library After a monumental effort by Steve Scranton, Don Gossard Jill Korgimagi and myself; the ASGS video library is officially out of development and in beta testing. It seems that the technical kinks have been worked out. Select people are now testing it looking for ways to break it. I hope they fail. At the moment there are less than a dozen videos up for testing. In time there will be several hundred, our video library is extensive, dating back decades.  Soon you will be able to search the entire library by: Year Location of filming (Symposium location)  Author (presenter’s name) Newest/oldest date of recording Keyword search (any word in the title or description) Hashtag search (a long list of words assigned by the editors to describe content. You’ll be able to scroll down the list or manually type a word. This will be an epic upgrade to member benefits. We’ve been waiting for years to provide our members with a way to watch ASGS symposium videos again. It used to be that a CD was sent each year with video of the previous year’s symposium demos. That was stopped quite a while ago as being too expensive. The new online video library will be searchable. These search features took a long time to get right. There will be way too many videos to randomly scroll through the list, looking for what you want. If you can’t find what you want it it’s as good as not being there and we’ve failed you. Steve our Webmaster guru has spent the past 4 months wrestling the various search options into submission. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve lost track of how many times it looked like it was going to work and then didn’t. I’m happy to say, it’s working now and with any luck our beta tester breakers will fail and you’ll get to try it for yourself by the end of the month. Stay tuned. Methods and Materials Handbook Don in the home office spent a bunch of time going through this historic pdf document on the website adding chapter titles and a Read More …

Symposium planning Things are well underway. Presenters are slowly sending their footage in for editing. Jill Korgimagi and I are gradually building out the videos to be shown during the symposium. Kyle Meyer our Social Media guru is crushing it with multiple posts per week to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. If you notice an ASGS post online, like it and repost it. This helps a lot to get the word out. The Art Auction is slowly receiving donations AND we could use a lot more items. This might be a great year to donate for the first time. It’s my first time. I’ve donated a one of a kind martini glass I made a few years ago. The Auction is online. It will have a worldwide audience. If you want your work to be seen by a larger audience. This is a great way to do it. Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to learn about how to donate an item.  The home office and I have just published the revised material for exhibitor and sponsors this year. It’s the least expensive opportunity to be an exhibitor ever. If you know of a company that might be interested point them here for more information. Technical References I created a new page in our library called Technical References. Here is that page. The first document that’s been added is the long missing Methods and Materials Handbook. This massive collection of tech tips, glass shop hints, practices and procedures used to be mailed to each member when they joined.  Some of it is outdated. Some of it might be dangerous to try given what we know today. Some of it is very helpful or hard to find information. It was assembled by the ASGS founding fathers in the 1950’s and 1960’s for use by members….. and It’s back. Maybe you know of a document that would be good to post here for members to use. Please contact me directly with your information Video Library I’ve been working with the home office and the webmaster to create a searchable video library to hold our symposium (and other) videos. Because of some behind the scenes technical details, it’s been a painfully slow process to bring this online. This week we took a big step forward. The search engine seems to be working. You will be able to search by date, location, author, category (hashtag) or any of the text description of the video. The next step is to load a dozen or so videos and retest. If it all still works I’ll flick the switch and we’ll be in business for ourselves and no longer need the quirky unpredictable link to Flow Magazine.   Mail forwarding It’s one of those naggy behind the scenes things that makes life difficult even though it’s mostly invisible: email forwarding. Over the past few years we’ve had a hard time using ASGS based addresses. They forwarded inconsistently. Sometimes the mail never got delivered. Other times it was Read More …

  Membership renewal We’re well underway in the annual renewal of memberships and hoping that all of you will or already have renewed your membership to the ASGS. If you haven’t: Is there something in the way? What’s lacking? Is there something you’re unhappy about? You can reach out to me one-on-one for a private confidential conversation if that feels better. I’d like to know how the ASGS can better serve you. Symposium Update Videos are rolling in and being processed in anticipation of showing them during the symposium. I am really excited about some of what’s in the pipeline: center flange and sidearms on a 100Liter flask, build a 200mm Square box out of boro plate, get a tour of the glass shop in Trondheim Norway, learn how to covert a soft glass neon electrode into a boro electrode, get an introduction to the glass engraving lathe. It’s going to be a good one. Don’t miss out. It will never be as inexpensive as this year. $100 for members $40 for students. All recordings will be available to watch for a month after the symposium in case you miss a day. Artistic to Regular member change Randall Strait was approved for converting from artistic to regular membership. Congrats to Randall who is an incredible resource to the ASGS with his equipment skills, network of resources, and boundless friendliness and energy. Welcome! Bylaws changes In case you don’t already know, the ASGS is governed by a document called “The Bylaws” You can find them here on the website. In order to make changes to how the ASGS is run sometimes the bylaws need changing. This is intentionally a somewhat slow process and involves: the board discusses an idea for change if it’s agreed we pursue by passing a motion an email is sent to the Bylaws and Steering Committee explaining what the board wants done The Bylaws and Steering Committee then meets to discuss the proposed changes and 1) reviews the current bylaws looking for words that need to be added or removed to meet the request of the board. 2) The committee can also include it’s opinion about the proposed change: is the change a good idea or not and why  3) When their work is done they send their results back to the board. The board must now review and vote twice with a time gap between the votes, on the proposed changes before the bylaw change goes into effect.  At last night’s BOD meeting the board voted yes for the first of the two votes need to change the bylaws on these three items: 1) How to elect a replacement President elect if the current one resigns while in office 2) How to cancel an ASGS membership 3) Reduce the time between bylaws votes from 4 months to 2 months. The exact wording of each proposed change can be found on the BOD Meeting records page here. All three proposed changes need to wait at least 4 months Read More …

It’s been a very productive month. For a full list of what’s happening check out my President’s report on the BOD reports page Salem Community College trip Perhaps the most enjoyable thing all month was a trip to SCC which I graduated from in 1979. Back then we blew glass by the light of whale oil lamps and ate nothing but hard boiled eggs so we had enough natural gas to run the torches (just kidding). But really what we call flameworking or torch working today, is also called “lampworking” because if you pull a glass point and blow air through the skinny end into an oil lamp (works with a candle as well) you add enough extra oxygen into the flame to melt glass. This was the original heat source used to manipulate small bits of glass found on the floor of the hot shop into various shapes. The original flameworked paperweights contained glass objects made this way. We’ve come a long way from oil lamps to Herbies and GTTs and Carlisles. Advisory board meeting I went to SCC to represent the ASGS at their advisory board meeting. This group meets annually to give the college input for it’s scientific glass program, what’s working well, and what could use improvement. It’s an opportunity for the ASGS President to meet the big players at SCC and the scientific glass industry. This year there were Presidents, Owners, and production managers from AGI, Astra Glass, ChemGlass, DelVetro Scientific, Millipore, PEG, SP Wilmad, Tosoh, and Richland Glass present. It was very helpful to hear what they were interested in. They also had a number of things to share about the ASGS. As it turns out many of them are interested in the ASGS developing a certification program for glassblowers. Something similar to the software and welding industries where a person can take training in a specialized area of their field, take a test supplied by industry experts and receive a certificate saying they are certified as a Microsoft Office Specialist in Excel or pipeline welding or many other specialties in both fields. In the scientific world there is nothing like this. Companies looking to hire potential employees are interested in understanding the potential employee’s skill set. Having certifications managed by the ASGS would help that. I agreed to begin conversation with several company reps to learn more about the details of what they are looking for. I imagine this to be a 3-5 year project that could dramatically improve our membership numbers, increase symposium participation (that’s where the tests would be administered), and also add a bit to our income stream. Career Fair I set up the ASGS booth at the SCC career fair and spoke with a number of students about why joining ASGS is a good idea. This year I had QR codes ready for those interested so they could open a membership application right there at the booth on their cell phones. Also I worked with Don at the home Read More …

President’s Report It’s been even busier this month than last month. To see all the things I’m working on please check out the President’s Report in a new section of the website called BOD Reports. Going forward this is where all section directors, committee chairs and board officers will be uploading their reports for you to see. Historically writing reports was done twice per year just in time for what was called “The Board Packet” This 40 – 80 page document was distributed to board members only and meant to update the board on what’s happened since the previous board meeting. The reports were often quite long and difficult to write. The President often had a hard time getting Directors to submit them in time for the meeting. Many folks didn’t read the reports even if they did get them. It was a bit of a mess. I’m trying something new with the BOD report page. Each report provider emails a report 250- 500 words long. It gets posted to the website. All members including the BOD has permanent access to them. This first time around I received about half of the expected reports with most of the rest expected by the end of the month. Hop over there, read the President’s report and all the others as well. President’s Report It’s been even busier this month than last month. To see all the things I’m working on please check out the President’s Report in a new section of the website called BOD Reports. BOD Documents Another valuable addition is the BOD documents page. The newest addition is the Book of Motions. This is a chronological list of every board motion made. It took countless hours to assemble this. The creator of the document is Gary Coyne. Most recently it was Nicholas Carpenter a newer member of the Southwest Section who added the last 15 years worth of records. Video library I’ve said it before but this time I think we really are very close to releasing the first batch of symposium videos. Jill Korgimage has worked tirelessly on indexing and editing these files. Soon, very soon.

Seems I haven’t posted in a while. It’s been extra busy though. Website The website main menu has changed a bit. I’m slowly moving items out of the old sidebar menu to the new drop down menu. This will make room for new content on the home page. I’ve tracked down missing Proceedings and added them to the library. As soon as the joint 2024-2025 issue is available I’ll get that posted. The next project is to track down the remaining missing Fusions that stand in the way of having the full collection available online. The donation button on the home page is modified so that you can now designate what your donation goes to. GAS Conference Jill Korgemagi-Clark and the Great Lakes Section have teamed up to staff a booth at the 2026 GAS conference in Corning. The hope is that this marks the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship between the two organizations. It will give us much greater visibility in the larger glass world and hopefully lead to an influx of new members. The down side is the booth is expensive and we have a deficit budget again this year. The board approved spending the money with the understanding that donations would be requested from sections to help offset the $1,900 expense. If every member chipped in $5 we’d have it more than covered. You can use the home page donate button to make your contribution. Don’t forget to mark it GAS Conference. Bylaws The Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws are now on the website on the BOD documents page. The Bylaws have been updated with the latest revisions being highlighted in yellow to make them easier to see. There will be a lot more bylaws work done in the coming year. There are a bunch of places where the language is vague, or self contradictory, or just plain missing information. Video libraryWork on getting our videos onto our website continues. There is now a draft page (not visible to the membership) for use by the team to organize the layout and search functions. The editing of videos continues with several revisions having already been done to the lead in and leadout segments till they say everything that needs to be said. This has taken a lot longer than I’d imagined, I didn’t realize how much was involved in getting it right. At present we’re looking at going public sometime in the first quarter of 2026. Jill Korgemagi-Clarke is the lead on this project. She brings with her a deep background in graphic arts ands design. We are very lucky to have her participation. As soon as the video library is live we can be done with the third party arrangement with Flow magazine which sells access to our videos to the general public. ASGS members were supposed to have free access to our videos but the reality was that free access has never worked consistently. It will be good to have control of our content for Read More …

Thank you Board I am very proud of how the board is getting down to business! Since July 1 we’ve discussed and voted on 19 motions! We’ve done a lot and have quite a way to go till we’re caught up again. As you might know we now meet every 3rd Thursday of the month 7PM Central for 90 minutes on Zoom. The Zoom link is found in the events calendar on the home page. All members are welcome to sit in on all meetings. The meeting agenda is published 1 week in advance. Meeting minutes, AI transcripts, and Zoom recordings are posted to the BOD Meeting Records page. Motions passed will continue to be published in Fusion. We are doing a great job of sticking to our agendas and time frames. All of us are improving our skills at using Robert’s Rules of Order to conduct a respectful, orderly, and productive meeting. Between meetings the board stays in touch with it’s own discussion list so mundane issues and procedural stuff doesn’t clog up meeting time. If you have questions about what the board is doing, I’d encourage you to reach out to your director or to me or hop on a Town Hall Zoom call. I’m trying to schedule those to land on Saturdays after board meetings to discuss questions, concerns, or share compliments. This is a democratically run organization. It will succeed if you participate in the process of letting your voice be heard. Bylaws Changes On 10/16 the board discussed motions made and passed at the June 2025 BOD meeting. Bylaws require 2x approval separated by at least 4 months. The second vote was carried out on 10/16. We approved three bylaws changes which are now part of our governance. It is posted on the BOD Records page. It will also be published in the next issue of Fusion.

Virtual Symposium While I was in Germany the board had it’s next meeting and agreed to my proposal that next year’s symposium be a virtual (online only) symposium followed in 2027 by an in-person symposium. This will temporarily reduce our expenses, give us an opportunity to reach out to populations that traditionally have not attended a symposium, give the regular volunteers a much needed break, and start a 2 year planning cycle for future symposia. The virtual symposium will have most of the same events you are used to with the exception of hands on glassblowing. The virtual in 2026 and the in-person in 2027 will be will be planned by two separate groups of volunteers starting as soon as possible. Moving forward I hope to keep this 2 year planning cycle going. It would make hotel interactions much easier and put less time stress on the symposium organizers. Stay tuned as I find these committee folks and get them started. I will schedule a Town Hall Zoom Call in the near future to discuss this decision and the virtual symposium in greater detail with all interested members. VDG Meeting I got back last night from a great trip to Germany. It was a wonderful 2 day symposium attended by 165 folks from all over the world: Germany, US, Canada, Italy, Belgium, France Norway, Denmark, Poland, and a bunch of other places. The VDG hired live real time English translators and offered wireless headsets for us non native German speakers to use during seminars, business meeting and demos. It turns out English is the universal glass language, who knew? I sat in the VDG business meeting and met several BOD members. I hope that good connections have been started between the two organizations. In some ways the VDG faces the same sorts of problems we do: every year fewer volunteers to help with the work, mostly the same faces stepping up to volunteer, declining society enrollment while at the same time facing increasing expenses, fewer training opportunities for folks entering the field, business challenges from China and India which have rock bottom prices, not enough good quality content for their journal, ever increasing difficulty in finding a symposium location that is willing to allow open flame sessions, …. all this just like us. On the other hand, the apprenticeship training program in Germany is government supported, produces very high quality glassblowers and continues to function well. The Certification program (Apprentice Journeyman, Master) and is universally welcomed by industry and research, as a means of determining skill levels (and pay). The VDG has a board of governance to manage the business of the VDG and a second “board” of sorts which organizes events like the annual symposium. I am intrigued by the idea and will explore this a bit further. Klaus Paris organized a wonderful lunch conversation with the VDG magazine editor Thomas, myself, and the newly formed Polish society President, Pieter. We explored the idea of sharing articles across our Read More …

Website The most recent updates are to the menu structure. I’m slowly adjusting where things are to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. As I add new pages it may take some time till locations are stable. I apologize for any confusion during this transition period.  Archives I’ve started adding documents to the Archives and will likely be adding more for several months as I find them on various folks’, hard drives or bookshelves. BOD I’ve been working to finalize bank account access for the new Treasurer and President. Thanks to Doni Hatz our past Secretary the documents needed have been passed along to the home office. I hope this is the last bit needed to conclude the changeover from the old board to the new board. I’ve also had good conversations with Jerry Cloninger the Executive Secretary and Andy Gibbs the Board Secretary about how to document board meetings. The goal is to make the records concise and easy to use and at the same time not lose any information. This will need to include the Book of Motions which hasn’t been updated for about 20 years. We’ve got our work cut out for us, that’s OK the team is strong and getting stronger. VDG Symposium This will be my first time at a VDG symposium. I look forward to meeting VDG board members and learn about how we might cooperate and collaborate more. Both of us face the same issues of declining membership and a changing work environment for scientific glassblowers. I’m also hoping to establish better connections with European businesses who would benefit from sponsoring or advertising with the ASGS. Membership The new membership committee continues to work with Don in the home office plus Jim and Laura Cornell past membership and home office gurus, to get access to the records they need and become familiar with the process of onboarding new members. There’s a fair bit of behind the scenes work involved with bringing on a new member. I’m working with the membership committee, the home office, the publications committee and the board to look for ways to streamline the process. We are making progress. A bit hearty thank you to everyone involved for making the effort. It’s taking a while to get this figured out.