Ken Platt plays with fire inside his 118-year-old carriage house on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
He has perfected the art of lampwork after 45 years of working with glass, initially for a company that made laboratory apparatus and today as an artist whose wares include Christmas ornaments, vessels of varying sizes and fruit flycatchers that double as bud vases.
Platt is one of 48 participating artists in the Annual Artisans Guild Studio Tour, a holiday self-drive shopping and wine-tasting event on Thanksgiving weekend. In its 22nd year, the tour invites the public into the studios of working artists for conversation, demonstrations and behind-the-scenes glimpses of what goes into the creative process.
Pottery, carving, metalsmithing, photography, painting, quilting and custom woodworking are among the genres represented.
“It’s the busiest weekend of the year,” said Platt, who hosted upward of 500 visitors at High Point Glass Works during the tour last year. His charming studio space with classic rock playing in the background and German Shepherd Jäger lounging nearby is a favorite stop as it’s the lone business of its kind on the Shore.
He’ll be in action in the rear of the studio and holiday ornaments, most blown by Ken, but others crafted by his wife, Edith, will be for sale up front. She crafts hers by fuse slumping, a warm glass technique.
Ken initially made scientific apparatus for the semiconductor industry. He was a master scientific glassblower who worked in Silicon Valley until a move back to his native New Jersey changed his direction. His sister selling Christmas trees inspired him to try something new.
“That gave me the idea of making the ornaments and selling them on her Christmas tree farm,” he said. High Point Glassworks originated in New Jersey, named for being the highest section of the state at 1,803 feet. The Platts kept the name when they moved to the Eastern Shore.
Often folks walk into High Point Glass Works expecting to see a furnace.
“That’s not what I do,” Ken said. “I do lampworking, which predates the offhand glass blowing. I work with solid rods of glass and tubes of glass in a flame, heating the glass with a torch.”
Early lampworking dates back to using the flame of an oil lamp.
Ken manipulates the molten glass by hand or uses a lathe to blow the glass to the desired size and shape. Not only are the results stunning, it’s a cost-efficient way to do business.
“If you have a furnace, you keep that glass hot 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” he said. “With the torch, I have propane tanks and oxygen and when I’m done at the end of the day, I shut my tanks off.”
One of the more challenging aspects of an art where temperatures can exceed 2,000 degrees stems from allowing the glass to cool down too much during the process, creating a stress that could crack the glass.
“It’s a feel thing,” Ken said. “Me and glass have come to an understanding. Just out of instinct, I know how far I can go before it becomes a problem and cracks.”
Ken favors clear glass but will add color or use a masking technique to add a frosted stripe, for example, when making candy canes.
The studio tour draws travelers from New Jersey and Maryland as well as Hampton Roads and North Carolina.
The Artisans Guild of the Eastern Shore of Virginia tour is 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Nov. 29-30. A full list of artists and tour stops is available online.
