A gift of glass
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BEYOND THE LAB
A gift of glass web.mit.edu/glasslab
Zenzile Brooks
W
e are taught as children that it is impolite to return a gift. However, the chaotic lab space that sprawled before junior faculty member Michael Cima in January 1986 was surely the exception to this social rule. A senior faculty member retiring from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had offered Cima a basement laboratory that had been unused for several years, and Cima had accepted with neither hesitation nor observation. After the blaze of finals subsided, local artist Page Hazlegrove and a few students asked Cima if they could use the furnace in his new laboratory for glassblowing. Cima agreed—still without observation. On a chilly January day, Cima popped down to the lab to finally observe the spoils, and could not believe his eyes. “There was asbestos everywhere. Half the lab you couldn't go in, because it was just piles of junk. There was this big pile of bricks. There were a couple of guys there with no shirts on, pulling out gobs of glass. The windows were wide open— January. I looked, and I said, ‘Oh my god, they’re going to kill themselves.’” Over the next year, Hazlegrove would lure Cima into the thrilling art of glassblowing. This tiny glass lab would be rescued from a period of dormancy, and restored for all students. Cima himself would help to clean the lab, get rid of that pile of bricks, build furnaces, and eventually teach the craft. Cima would discover the power of glassblowing to train MIT students in essential skills for research, science, and engineering. Any glassblowing operation requires a team of people, a few-foot long pipe, and a 2000°F furnace containing molten glass. The team thrusts the pipe into the furnace to gather molten glass from within. Over the course of an hour or so,
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they carry the loaded pipe back and forth between the furnace and tools seemingly pilfered from a medieval torture chamber—wiry pincers, glistening knives, giant brushes, a shiny steel table. Periodically, one member will sit down and roll the pipe back and forth across raised metal arms at lap height, while the second member crouches down and blows the pipe to inflate the sagging molten glass on the other end. The piece responds just like some heavy, glowing balloon; the hot glass gives off an orange luster that mimics the fiery red of the furnace. Sophie Diehl, a junior in electrical engineering, said her favorite aspect of this dance is “the way the glass looks when it’s still hot. That’s something that you don’t get to see unless you’re actually in the Glass Lab. Any piece that looks beautiful at room temperature looks even more beautiful at 1500° [Fahrenheit]. It just has this special way of glowing from the inside that is really enthralling.” The Glass Lab glows with activity most days of the year. There are over
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100 applicants for the mere 16 student spots per class each semester. A team of 50 students, staff, and instructors run the programs. Fam
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