It was 1969 and Randy Strong was studying ceramics at the California College of Arts and Crafts. The school was piecing together a curious new facility on campus out beneath a corrugated tin roof. It was going to be a glass furnace. Strong had never been the kind of guy to stand around and watch, so he began helping with the bricklaying and welding. Then came the night when, wandering across campus, Strong discovered they had finally finished the furnace. He hurried in to take a closer look and that’s when he saw it for the first time - hot glass.

Rain clattered against the tin roof. The furnace glowed as the evening dimmed. The glassworker danced, shaman-like with his pipe—moving, shaping, and layering a bright globe of molten glass.

“I just sat there,” Strong remembers, “like a lot of people do—sat there in awe, watching. Glass is that way. It is a very WOW experience. Right then I fell in love. You could say it was love at first sight.”. . . .