Fire Craft

Fire Craft

Art, Body, and World Among Glassblowers

$28.00

Publication Date: 12th August 2025

In Fire Craft, Erin E. O’Connor interweaves an immersive firsthand account of her experiences learning to blow glass with a sensuous ethnography of embodiment and community among glassblowers. Read More
In Fire Craft, Erin E. O’Connor interweaves an immersive firsthand account of her experiences learning to blow glass with a sensuous ethnography of embodiment and community among glassblowers. Read More
Description

Glassblowing by hand might seem like a dying art, yet it is thriving: Studios and universities offer popular classes, and glass art is widely exhibited and sold. Amateur and professional glassblowers alike are captivated by the choreography of fire, smoke, and molten material. Why are people drawn to this ancient craft? What is distinctive about the social, physical, and intellectual experience of glassblowing? How does the body learn an art?

In Fire Craft, Erin E. O’Connor interweaves an immersive firsthand account of her experiences learning to blow glass with a sensuous ethnography of embodiment and community among glassblowers. Through compelling stories, such as her struggle to produce an elegant goblet, she shows how a novice becomes hooked by and committed to a craft. Reflecting on embodied knowledge, O’Connor considers how we negotiate mistakes and failures, how we strive to develop proficiency in the face of shortcomings, and how through making objects we make meaning. She also explores the history of glassblowing and how various social, environmental, and knowledge frameworks shape the valorization of craft. From the furnaces of empire to the hot bodies of collaboration and love, O’Connor reveals the interconnectedness of the body with the elemental world. A gripping tale of the social world and experience of glassblowing, Fire Craft passionately defends practical labor as intellectual work that changes self and society.

Details
  • Price: $28.00
  • Pages: 288
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • Imprint: Columbia University Press
  • Publication Date: 12th August 2025
  • Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in
  • Illustration Note: 19 b&w illustrations
  • ISBN: 9780231218443
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory
    ART / Glass
Reviews
This book makes a unique and important contribution to our understanding of craft and embodied knowledge. O’Connor’s long apprenticeship as a glassblower has endowed her with firsthand knowledge and expertise, and her careful reflections on her personal learning trajectories as a maker enrich both her ethnographic storytelling and theoretical analyses.
- Trevor H. J. Marchand, author of The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work: Craftwork in Twenty-First Century England
Author Bio
Erin E. O’Connor is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Politics and Human Rights at Marymount Manhattan College. She is a recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Glassblowing by hand might seem like a dying art, yet it is thriving: Studios and universities offer popular classes, and glass art is widely exhibited and sold. Amateur and professional glassblowers alike are captivated by the choreography of fire, smoke, and molten material. Why are people drawn to this ancient craft? What is distinctive about the social, physical, and intellectual experience of glassblowing? How does the body learn an art?

In Fire Craft, Erin E. O’Connor interweaves an immersive firsthand account of her experiences learning to blow glass with a sensuous ethnography of embodiment and community among glassblowers. Through compelling stories, such as her struggle to produce an elegant goblet, she shows how a novice becomes hooked by and committed to a craft. Reflecting on embodied knowledge, O’Connor considers how we negotiate mistakes and failures, how we strive to develop proficiency in the face of shortcomings, and how through making objects we make meaning. She also explores the history of glassblowing and how various social, environmental, and knowledge frameworks shape the valorization of craft. From the furnaces of empire to the hot bodies of collaboration and love, O’Connor reveals the interconnectedness of the body with the elemental world. A gripping tale of the social world and experience of glassblowing, Fire Craft passionately defends practical labor as intellectual work that changes self and society.

  • Price: $28.00
  • Pages: 288
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • Imprint: Columbia University Press
  • Publication Date: 12th August 2025
  • Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in
  • Illustrations Note: 19 b&w illustrations
  • ISBN: 9780231218443
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory
    ART / Glass
This book makes a unique and important contribution to our understanding of craft and embodied knowledge. O’Connor’s long apprenticeship as a glassblower has endowed her with firsthand knowledge and expertise, and her careful reflections on her personal learning trajectories as a maker enrich both her ethnographic storytelling and theoretical analyses.
– Trevor H. J. Marchand, author of The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work: Craftwork in Twenty-First Century England
Erin E. O’Connor is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Politics and Human Rights at Marymount Manhattan College. She is a recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research at the Corning Museum of Glass.