William Gudenrath: Unveiling Historic Glassmaking Mysteries
The 2016 Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG) video demonstration of William Gudenrath making a dragon stem gobletattracted 1.4 million YouTube views and over 50 millions views of various condensed and shorter versions. Technical mastery at the furnace in combination with the magic of Venetian glass are the cornerstones for both this viral video as well as Gudenrath’s career in glass.
A glassblower, scholar, author, lecturer, and teacher, Gudenrath is recognized internationally as one of the foremost authorities on glassmaking techniques of the ancient world through the 18th century. His findings and observations were first widely published in the 1991 book, Glass, 5000 Years. In 2016 his electronic resource, The Techniques of Renaissance Venetian Glassworking, was released followed by The Techniques of Renaissance Venetian-Style Glassworking in 2019, which focuses on Renaissance-style Venetian glass. Nicknamed the “glass detective” by the Associated Press, Gudenrath has spent many decades studying specific works in glass in an attempt to determine how they were made.
One technical mystery that had plagued Gudenrath for well over 20 years was how Venetian chain and scroll ornamentation, found often as decoration on goblet stems, was created – a subject at the center of a decades-long debate between Gudenrath and Venetian glass Maestro Lino Tagliapietra. When Gudenrath solved the mystery of how to make the chain and scroll at the furnace and not at the torch, he express-shipped the piece to Tagliapietra in Murano as soon as the glass was annealed.
As resident adviser for The Studio at CMOG, Gudenrath began teaching in 1996. His Introduction to Venetian Techniquescourse is widely considered a fundamental building block for glassblowers. He teaches six courses a year using “a very clear formula” that begins with a demonstration of a procedure that students then repeat.
Gudenrath explains: “The process of repeatedly creating isolated parts of an object allows the student to pay attention to the details. I teach the fundamentals of the Venetian style, which is blowing glass thinly, making blown feet and mereses, making simple handles, and dealing with various decorative features. But above all, doing the really hard work of learning the fundamentals in a way that allows you to – virtually every time – succeed in making an object. It’s the same thing that a pianist does practicing years and years of scales and arpeggios and tricky patterns so that when those things come up in a piece, you’re ready for them.”
Gudenrath’s lifelong love of glass began at age 11 when he was gifted a chemistry set. But it was not a singular love. In 1974, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas and in 1978 his Master of Music degree from the Julliard School. He played his New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1975. Gudenrath’s relationships with music and glass performance are entwined; he describes individual pieces of classical music and individual blown glass objects as having “a tempo.” Enthralled with the challenge of playing Bach compositions, Gudenrath performed an all-Bach organ recital at the Glass Art Society conference in Murano, Italy, in May 2018. He describes Bach as the standard for difficulty, making it easy to draw comparisons between his pursuit of perfection in music and his mastery of Venetian glass techniques.
While working at UrbanGlass in 1980, Gudenrath’s glassblowing assistant didn’t show up, so he proceeded unassisted, gathering molten glass out of the furnace and bringing his own bit for a merese, all while managing the temperature and shape of the glass on his blowpipe. This accomplishment was the beginning of his unusual practice of working alone at the furnace, one that he continues today. Gudenrath’s works are sold in the CMOG Museum Shops, as well as other exclusive stores and galleries nationwide.
In addition to his numerous contributions in print and video on many aspects of glass history, Gudenrath is co-chairman, with Tagliapietra, of the technical committee of Venetian Glass Study Days at the Istituo Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, in Venice, and serves on the International Advisory Committee UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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