It all started with glass beads.
These unassuming but pretty craft store staples serve as the basis for many homemade necklaces.
Annalee Pickett loved the small, round pieces of glass and made all sorts of jewelry for her family and friends. When Pickett’s high school art club teacher received unexpected funding, she noticed her students’ interest in the jewelry and ordered a kit to make the beads, complete with glass rods and a small torch.
Pickett was thrilled. So thrilled that she asked her parents for one for Christmas so she could make the balls at home.
At the time, the Illinois teenager didn’t think this would be the start of her career. She just thought the glass pieces she created would be a beautiful and easy way to create gifts for herself and her loved ones.
But then fate intervened.
More: UGA student-run charity UGA Miracle raises more than $1 million to help sick children
Pickett’s aunt, a hairdresser, cut the hair of Dave Perry, the scientific glassblower at the University of Illinois. He noticed all the glasswork in the studio and asked who made it. When Aunt Bonnie told him, Perry invited Pickett to come to his shop.
“When I was there, I knew immediately that glass was so much more than just art,” says Pickett. “I was just amazed by all the machines and the different types of pipes.”
Pickett had found a career.
Perry’s assistant had attended Salem Community College in New Jersey, the only school in North America with an accredited scientific glass technology program. Pickett soon followed in his footsteps, completing the program in 2011 and immediately heading to Colorado to work in the scientific glassblowing industry.
In 2020, the University of Georgia called.
The previous scientific glassblower had left the company and the workshop in the Chemistry Building was empty. Pickett, who had always respected the university glassblowing community, took a risk and moved south.
Designing the perfect glass container
Beakers sit on tables, test tubes fill drawers, and other more specialized glassware holds various chemicals and other substances. Almost every scientific experiment requires something made of glass.
The glassware has to come from somewhere.
While researchers could simply order test tubes from a large manufacturing company, often scientists need something custom-made, made from scratch and inflated to the exact specifications needed to perform a particular task.
This was the case for Tina Salguero, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Salguero’s lab studies the structure of crystals and analyzes how they might eventually contribute to the development of new materials for electronics.
But first Salguero has to grow the crystals. To do this, she needs the right container.
This is where Pickett comes in.
“The vials we use to grow our crystals are all custom-made,” says Salguero. “You can’t buy them, and they are absolutely necessary for our work.”
She worked with former UGA glassblower Kyle Meyer to perfect the design of the tubes her lab uses every day.
When Salguero holds up the glass tube, it looks almost like any other tube you’d see in a lab, except it’s filled with what looks like shards of shiny black glitter. The crystals grow inside the tube and protect the chemicals from exposure to oxygen.
“If we didn’t have glassblowing, we wouldn’t be doing this kind of work,” says Salguero. In fact, many others in their field can’t do what Salguero’s lab does because they don’t have access to a glassblower.
The hidden gem of science
The glassblowing facility is part of UGA’s Center for Applied Isotope Research, which was originally established in 1977 to advance nuclear technology. Today, the center offers faculty, researchers and students a range of services ranging from food and beverage authentication to radiocarbon dating.
Due to ongoing construction work to modernize the chemistry building, it is currently a bit of an adventure to find the shop, but tucked away in the winding hallways is a space unlike any other on campus.
Crystal clear tubes several feet long. A workbench with a torch that fuses two pieces of glass together. A lathe with a flame so hot that protective shields are recommended to protect the eyes from the glow when it touches the glass.
“The University of Georgia Scientific Glass Shop is truly a hidden gem,” says Carla Hadden, the center’s director. “We are particularly fortunate at the University of Georgia to have a modern, well-equipped scientific glass shop run by an experienced craftswoman with a strong reputation in her field.”
Pickett is the current president of the American Scientific Glassblowers Society, and her enthusiasm for her work is infectious. So infectious that Kunal Vohra, a senior studying mathematics and management information systems, begged to be accepted into her scientific glassblowing course, which is offered each spring and is geared primarily toward chemistry graduate students.
It’s a small place with only five spaces, but as luck would have it, one was free.
Vohra was there.
Each week he learned a new skill. Week one: Making a round-bottomed pipe. Week two: Making a flat-bottomed pipe. Week three: Putting the pipes together.
“Annalee demonstrated a few examples and showed us the process. We asked questions and then we all failed miserably trying to do it,” Vohra said, laughing. “Then we all came back and asked more questions.”
Pickett made the techniques look simple, but Vohra and the other students quickly learned that they were anything but simple.
“Why isn’t this working? Where is this crack coming from? Why is it uneven? Why is it asymmetrical?” Vohra remembers thinking.
But he soon got the hang of it. And when the semester was over, Vohra wanted to hone his craft further.
So Pickett hired Vohra to help with some of her simpler jobs, like smaller test tubes and vials.
Vohra doubts he will ever become a professional glassblower, but he can imagine using his skills for more artistic endeavors in the future.
“I’m learning really important things on this job that will help me use glassblowing as an artistic medium,” he says. “Glassblowing is just really, really cool and I hope there will be room for more people to do it in the future.”
Pickett agrees and hopes to expand the course in the future and offer workshops for teachers and staff.
In the meantime, her goal is to continue doing what she loves: collaborating with UGA researchers to make her experiments possible.
“I’ll never be a scientist, but here I can participate in the science,” says Pickett. “There’s a need we can fill – a real, definite benefit.”
Glass blowing
Traditional glassblowing is an art form that has been around for thousands of years. It involves using a metal blowpipe to blow molten glass into a bubble that can then be shaped and molded. The blowpipe resembles a very long straw that runs from the piece of glass to the glassblower’s mouth.
First, the glass is heated in a kiln or over a burner. The ideal temperature depends on the type of glass and the final use of the piece and ranges from just under 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to over 2,000 degrees.
In a modern glassworks, a glassblower often uses a glass lathe, a machine that holds and rotates the glass while the glassblower works the piece.
The glassblower uses numerous special tools to push and pull the glass into the correct shape while rotating the glass and continually reheating it as needed.
The glass is then slowly cooled over several hours in a special glass furnace, a so-called kiln, to prevent breakage.
