08/29/2018
So many memories flow through my mind as I clear out my fathers shop, which has been quite a project over the past several months since my fathers passing. It has been bitter-sweet for me. Grateful to have all the equipment which served him well for decades, most of which was second hand, buying any piece or part of anything he thought he could use or modify to be used on glass, most of our equipment was made by him with a little yankee ingenuity. What he did was not typical in the industrial equipment supply scope, the cutting industry was at its height from the late 1800's through the 1930's and never recovered after, and little demand for it after, so many companies discontinued supplying, or even producing things like lathe's and especially the stone wheels which are the most important. Over the years he snapped up any stone wheel he found, as did I and still do... I remember when I was very young, probably 5 years old or so, and his cutting teacher Carl Schweidenbach, a former cutter at the original Pairpoint factory in the 1920's, told my dad of another cutter from the time he was there had recently passed and his widow, knowing how important these tools were in the right hands, wished they could go to someone who could use them. He met with her and ended up buying his first good lathe, the one in the photo's, which is in my opinion one if the finest lathes of its type I have ever seen, and a pile of original stone wheels from the old Pairpoint factory. Having the right equipment is very important, your skill can only be only as good as the equipment you use. With that lathe, which he painted a really cool metallic green, he then went on to do some of the finest cutting on some of the most revered paperweight makers of his time like Bob, Bobbi, and Ray Banford, Johne Gooderham, Francis Whittemore, Charles Kaziun II, Charles Kaziun III, Nontes and James Kontes, Debbie and Delmo Tarsitano, Paul Stankard, Rick and Melissa Ayotte, Chris Buzzini, Ken Rosenfeld, Gordon Smith, Clinton Smith, David Graeber, and I'm sure I forgot a few. This lathe is one if the last pieces I will have to move out, but the most important to me personally. It is the caddilac of lathes... Once everything is all set up, I will post a few pics. It served him well for over 40 years, and I am honored to be a link of the chain of ownership for this survivor who didnt end up in a metal pile at a scrap yard, or for the war effort in the 40's like most of them did. As I look at it now, its more of a real symbol to me this is not the end, but a new beginning in many ways. Working with him side by side during all of the 90's and off and on after 2000, when I built my own studio at my home, with his assistance of course, was some of the most exciting times learning the glass business. Around 2000-2001 he told me he was contacted by a widow of a former Pairpoint cutter who wanted to sell her husbands equipment, so we went out and I bought everything she had with excitement at the opportunity. My start in the business was much like his, and was not possible without him, I will always owe him for teaching me the right way to do things, the first time, and how the long way is usually faster than trying to use a "shortcut". I will always be grateful.
