1000 Objects - More or Less

I keep track of things. It's in my nature. So when I started blowing glass it was only natural that I keep track of my progress by numbering each and every piece that I created. Since my first class in late 1999 or early 2000, I've made just over 1000 pieces - more or less.

And the "more or less" part is the interesting thing. For the better part of this decade of creating glass objects, I've made two or three per week. I rent time in a public studio at the Toledo Museum of Art and share a blow slot with a friend. Therefore making a couple of nice objects is about all the allotted time allows. Every few months, I'd collect up all the pieces, photograph them, and engrave my initials, the year, and the object's number on the bottom of the piece. Any piece I brought home followed this process. Those that were "floor models" or otherwise didn't survive were not included. This gave me a record of the piece after it was sold, and gave some provenance to the buy of the piece.

After taking a marble making class with Mark Matthews a year ago that all changed. I was making five or six marbles per session, sometimes more. Although they took up a lot less space, the numbers grew quicker. I started with marbles around piece number 777. I have pictures up through 776. Although I keep track of the items in my blowing notebook, I never got around to taking pictures. I hadn't figured out how to label the marbles with my initials, date, and serial number. Still haven't. So I figured it was easier to figure that out before taking the pictures.

So about a month ago, I realized that I was nearing 1000. Wow! Now I didn't make just marbles during this time, but I know I made less than fifty blown vessels. Hard to believe. Now I'm faced with the daunting problem of trying to sort out a couple of hundred objects and then photographing and marking them.

And the story gets a little more convoluted. For some strange reason, I haven't been including objects that I make in classes and workshops in the count. I don't know why. This probably adds another fifty or so to the count. And to make matters even worse, I haven't included those objects that I make in the kiln. I have a small kiln at home for warm glass work (kilnforming) as I can't afford the utilities it takes to keep a glass blowing studio running at home. I've made probably another fifty or sixty objects in the kiln at home.

I think that I'll have to create a new numbering scheme for these objects - yeah that's the ticket. Thus I don't really have a picture of the lucky object with number 1000. It could be anything at this point. So the picture shown in this post MAY include the 1000th object - or it may not.