HARDWICK – For nearly 40 years, Harry Besett has worked as a glassblower in Hardwick, where he makes art that is both utilitarian and unique.
photo by Wendy Besett
In 1984, Besett and his wife Wendy settled in Hardwick, founding Vermont Glass Workshop where their pieces are commissioned, created and sold.
Vermont Glass Workshop once sold to “probably 150 stores and galleries across the country,” said Besett. Now, the couple’s primary presence is online, as well as at some of their favorite craft fairs.
When asked why glassblowing is important in Hardwick, Besett downplayed what he does.
“So, it’s not. I don’t believe that there needs to be another piece of glass made in the world,” he said. “It happens to be something that I do, that I try to do with the idea that people might appreciate it, enjoy it, like living with it, like giving it, and could use it.”
Besett said he tries to make glass that’s “more on the accessible side, that’s more utilitarian, but I also like to make things that are unique within the glass world, and that people can also appreciate in that way.”
photo by Wendy Besett
Besett said he didn’t dream of being a glassblower. He was born and grew up in Baltimore, and said that he’s proud of being from Charm City.
Still, he knew from an early age that he wanted to live in a place like Hardwick, after visiting his family’s property in Starksboro, and working on a farm as a teen.
Besett was introduced to glassblowing during his time at Hamilton College in New York, and began working for a glassblower immediately after graduating.
“When I started to see this whole craft world, you can live wherever you want and as long as UPS can come and take it away, and take it to the galleries you’re selling to,” he said.
“We tripped over our place in Hardwick, so it was random. But also I had some of the tools to appreciate an area like this because I grew up on my father’s and grandparent’s experience of Vermont, which was the Depression, World War II, small farms being driven out of business, subsisting on very little. And yet there was an integrity and I admired the people,” he said.
Besett’s artistic process starts with the raw material, often recycled glass from a factory in West Virginia.
“We start with a crucible of molten glass, it’s kind of like honey in a honey pot, and then you get it up to about 2,200 to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Then you can reach in and gather it, much like honey on a honey gather.”
“We put them in a cooling oven that cools overnight, and then the next day we can come out and see what we’ve accomplished, whether we’ve filled the order that needed to be filled. And if not, we continue on, but that’s the process, using very traditional techniques,” he said.
Besett jokes that his favorite piece is “the last thing I made. And my least favorite piece is the next thing I have to make,” he said.
“Each time I start something, I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I have a hunch, but sometimes those hunches don’t play out,” said Besett. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the simplest object or the most complicated, it all demands that I’m in focus, that the glass gods are aligning.”
Vermont Glass Workshop is a collaboration between Besett and his wife, Wendy, who has a BFA in ceramics, and works in studio space on the property. He said the most satisfying collaborations they do together involve her skills as an artist, creating landscapes that he incorporates into a blown glass form.
“Somewhere between the two of us, we come up with something neither one of us could make individually,” he said. “They capture some of our sensibilities, in terms of our landscape and our place around here.”
When talking about his own upbringing in Baltimore, and his children’s lives in Hardwick, he said, “There is something fun about being from Hardwick. I’m not from Hardwick, but in the old days, folks would think it would be funny to tell me a Hardwick joke, variations on a farming joke, you know, kind of a put-down,” he said.
“And I would be like, well my kids are from Hardwick,” he said. “[I’m a] proud member of the Hardwick community, proud parent of two kids that have grown up in Hardwick, and very fortunate and blessed to have been able to be here, and feel a part of this community,” he said.
Claire Charlow writes for the Community News Service, a University of Vermont internship, for The Hardwick Gazette.
