Leo Kaspar is the first to admit that the craft tradition he works in doesn’t have a store of appeal for his generation. “Glass fusing is usually like people making tea coasters or Christmas-tree decorations,” he tells me over a video call from his studio in Devon in South West England. His mentor, Brett Manley, who teaches the craft locally, isn’t a “muscle dude with a ponytail,” as Kaspar imagined a typical glassworker, but a 70-something woman who has a following mostly her age. “She was like, Look, I only ever speak to women over seventy. This is insane that you’re here. Do whatever you want.”

He started at the beginning: by making a tea coaster. Then he began exploring a medium, he says, that is, “like, not cool.” But Kaspar thought that it could be, after learning about the area’s other glass traditions: a blowing facility in nearby Plymouth; in town, a manufacturer called Dartington Crystal; and several churches around Devon with impressive stained glass. For Kaspar, there was something a bit dangerous about melting down scraps and shards he found secondhand, the process unpredictable in exciting ways. He started with plates, which were at an intersection of “function and art,” but has since created sconces, lamps, and candleholders that would make the older generation proud and, perhaps, a younger one wake up to an aging tradition.

You can learn more about Leo Kaspar by visiting the studio’s website or on Instagram.

Top image courtesy Leo Kaspar

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