One of my favorite things to make is gifts for friends. Here are several projects I’ve worked on over the years.

Some of you may be curious about how all of this goes down. For those of you not familiar with glass-working, you can see some of the techniques below.

In the 1750s King Frederik of Denmark was concerned that his subjects did not appropriately prize the natural surroundings of their country.  He ordered that all the plants of the Kingdom be drawn in a reference work, Flora Danica.  It turned out to be a mammoth undertaking:  the first volume was published in 1761 and the last in 1883.  The prints are now most familiar on a fabulously expensive set of Royal Copenhagen china.   

It took the Danes over a century to finish the King’s flower project. I thought Mary Ann and I would spend at least that long on all the wonderful flowers in West Marin. But Covid intervened and Mary Ann turned her attention to kayaking. So now we are starting a new series: Fauna Invernessica.

When the opportunity for a show at the Bolinas Museum arose, I had very little time to prepare for it. Normally it takes a year to eighteen months. We had about two weeks. That called for, among other things, a lot of coldworking very fast.

As much as anything I have made, I felt “compelled” to make this piece. It took a lot longer than I thought it would when I started; and a lot longer than I remember now that it is done. And while It doesn’t look like anything I ever saw before, or even what I originally planned, I like it. I am proud of how it turned out and I cherish the folks that helped me with it.