The Milan Glassworker Who Bends 5,000 Degree Heat to His Will

Bryan Raskin’s glassworking studio in Milan feels at once medieval and steampunk modern. Shelves are crowded with vials of tinted, powdered glass; others are stacked with his kaleidoscopically hued creations, like segments from a stained-glass window in three-dimensional form. Machines glow and roar in their mysterious functions. The studio is Raskin’s cluttered sanctuary, where he tames molten glass with fire. 

Raskin is a lampworker, a term that refers to the ancient origins of his practice in which artisans heated glass over the flame of an oil lamp. Today, that heat arrives via electricity and tubes carrying propane and medical-grade purified oxygen, both of which are stored in trunk-sized containers in his workshop. These ingredients, essential for generating heat sufficient to turn borosilicate glass into a yielding, workable substance, feed into a glassblowing lathe that comprises Raskin’s workstation. 

Lampworking differs from traditional glassblowing in that the latter uses a furnace to melt standard soda-lime glass, and practitioners work primarily by blowing into a long pipe to shape the object at hand. Furnace temps of around 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit are adequate for this method. The glass used in Raskin’s lampworking is much harder — think of your all-but-unbreakable pyrex kitchenware. Temps of 5,000 degrees must be reached in order to render borosilicate glass molten and malleable. In the 19th century, advances in organic chemistry and the invention of borosilicate glass fueled the boom in scientific lampworking. “Back then it was all about beakers, test tubes, flasks, and condensers,” Raskin said. “Now we make art, too.” 

Raskin’s creations — among them lighting fixtures, lampshades, bowls, vases, stemware, mugs, bath accessories, holiday ornaments, and personal smoking apparatus — start with glass tubes that come in various lengths, thicknesses and colors. The lathe holds the tube between two rotating headstocks, allowing for symmetric heating of the glass as it softens, expands, contracts, fuses, and otherwise submits to Raskin’s expert touch. 

That touch is expressed through tools that Raskin wields like a maestro: a bristling array of torch nozzles; long-handled tweezers, pliers, and graphite paddles; a reamer to press dimples or hollows into the softened glass; handwheels on the lathe itself, for dimensional adjustments; and a tube he blows through to apply gentle pressure to modulate the thickness of the glass as it spins. This fiery, dynamic process can feel dangerous to the casual observer, verging on combustible chaos, but Raskin’s command is absolute, even serene. The laws of borosilicate thermodynamics are putty in this craftsman’s hands. “It’s second-nature now,” he said, “but it’s taken me years to get here.” 

Born and raised in Rockland County, N.Y., Raskin earned a political science degree from the University of Michigan in 1995, whereupon he abandoned his plan to become an environmental lobbyist and headed west.

It took one visit to a glassblowing studio in California to set him on his path. “That was it, I was hooked,” he said. The first pieces Raskin produced were pipes and bongs — a savvy merchandising move given his locale. Home was Humboldt County, the historical heart of the United States cannabis industry.  

Soon enough he expanded his product line and, working with business partner Wesley Hodges, started selling his wares at fairs and festivals up and down the West Coast. In 2003 the partners established Mirador Glass and commenced a phase of deep research and development, experimenting with product design, pattern motifs, and colorways. “We wanted to explore what customizing can do,” Raskin said. 

They launched their line of lighting products at Lightfair International, a trade show held in 2006 at the Javits Center in New York City, where they were a kind of David to the fair’s many international Goliaths. “We were the only booth in the whole place with our own custom products on display,” Raskin said. The effort paid off. Distributors came calling. Orders rolled in. They opened a gallery and a large shop back home in McKinleyville, Calif. A Mirador lighting installation was featured in an episode of Animal Planet’s reality show “Treehouse Masters.”  

Raskin’s output is both art and craft. He pilots his workstation like a precision engineer, and, he openly admits, certain aspects of the task are rote. Some of his commissions arrive with detailed color and design requests, and he’s happy to oblige. But his own color sense, his feel for the way jewel tones shimmer in translucent glass, how shadings concentrate in texture and opacity when run through the sand blaster, how swirls and stripes and ridges and plumes of pale and saturated pigments play out on his glass canvasses – all of this speaks to a honed aesthetic sensibility. 

Raskin bought out Hodges in 2013. Four years later he moved with his family back east, to Milan. Today he runs the Mirador operation from a cavernous home studio, with its one large window framing a vista of barns, pens, and pastures that support a menagerie of horses, goats, dogs, cats, chickens, and bees. His connection with animals runs deep — for years he handled search dogs pursuing human remains in wilderness areas and wildfire zones, ultimately becoming Commander of Humboldt County’s Search and Rescue squad. 

A yellowing photo of the legendary Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia hangs on a wall in the studio. Raskin’s a fan. The photo invokes his early lampworking days, but the product line abides — he is ramping up production of smoking paraphernalia for a cannabis dispensary he and his brothers are opening in Yonkers on Saturday, Dec. 6. 

And speaking of abiding, Raskin shakes his head in wonder at how many random orders he’s received over the years for Lebowski glasses — replicas of The Dude’s iconic ribbed tumbler that he so famously lets drop in the final scene of “The Big Lebowski.” “I’ve made thousands!” Raskin said. 

“But my favorite commissions are one-offs in restoration work,” he said. These are unique requests for highly specialized pieces to replace, say, the broken shade of one in a pair of 19th century table lamps, or missing facets of an antique chandelier — and sometimes the whole shattered fixture needs reproducing. With the Hudson Valley’s deep bench of historic homes and estates, there is no shortage of opportunity for such projects. “The work is challenging and so satisfying,” Raskin said, noting that the gratitude of customers compounds the pleasure of the work.

During his 30-plus years in the business, Raskin has not spent a penny on advertising. “I’ve never had to; it’s all been word of mouth,” he said with a gleam of understated pride. The work sells itself. For people interested in local holiday shopping, Mirador Glass orders are typically fulfilled in one to four weeks. Prices start at $20.