(country music)
- I'm Andi Kovel, and we're here at Esque studio.
I'm a designer, artists, glassblower.
We really want to create pieces that express a different way
of seeing glass.
How can we make this material important?
And how can we add to the history of it
instead of repeating what's already been done.
All right, let's do it.
I want to create new designs, new paradigms,
and new ways of pushing the medium.
So a lot of the processes and a lot of the designs are also
like material explorations and experiments.
What's our temperature?
- 954.
- I worked assisting a lot of glassblowers in New York,
and that's where I met my partner, Justin Parker, as well.
Once we met, we realized that we had not only a friendship,
but we also had a really similar aesthetic.
We had something that was really different
that we wanted to offer.
- Beautiful.
Alright, go for it.
- We've been working together for over 20 years
and we work together every day and Justin is in charge
of the studio and I'm in charge of the office.
- Flip. Wow.
- Beauty. That's how you do it.
- Okay. Door, Nic.
- Andy, and I,
she's very fine art and I'm very fabrication
and technical and craft.
It's cool because it's always a collaborative thing happens
and we always make something that's new and fresh.
- One of the pieces is our skull to decanter.
Just to make this solid sculpted skull,
we put that piece inside of decanter and it's like,
we use it for wine craft and what's really cool about it is
you fill it with red wine. And as the wine goes down,
the skull kind of emerges.
We really love the idea of our glass to be handled.
And there's something just so visceral and amazing,
and having an experience with the glass rather than just
viewing it on a pedestal where it's like, don't touch it.
We want you to touch it. We want you to hold it.
We want you to use it.
I've designed for Anthropology, Bushmills and Salai.
Local restaurants
like the Doug Fir.
We've done work for hotels like the W hotel.
I really enjoy doing that type of high profile work
because you have such a large audience when it's
in a public space like that.
The name Esque is in reference to outside influences
and our teachers and our mentors.
It's really just a nod of appreciation and respect
for everything that influences us in our lives.
So I am making a starter bubble
and it's just going to be a little bubble
so we can overlay the color on top of it.
And it gives it a layer of clear under the color,
which kind of helps the color from blurring out
once we punty it up.
And the glass is at 2050 in our furnace.
And so it's really the consistency of honey.
So you gather that on the end of the pipe,
and then you shape it into form that allows more
and more glass to be gathered without it pulling out
or changing shape.
- My name is Nic Speed.
I'm Andi's nephew and I am a glassblowing assistant here
at Esque.
- Grab it down here Nic. The neck,
that part's gonna be hot.
- Put both hands on the body, yep just like that.
- I'm an industrial design major at Pratt Institute.
When COVID hit and I wasn't gonna be in school for a year,
she offered me a job here and I came in in June, 2020,
and I've just been here ever since.
- Keep it turning, Nic.
- It was really stressful at the beginning
because I had to learn while they're making these pieces
that have to be up to a certain quality that they can sell.
- I'm trying to teach him. And as I teach him, you know,
maybe he messes up a couple times.
Then he brings what I want. Perfect.
But then there's a good chance that I'm going to mess up.
So it's like you have two people that have
to do things perfect every time.
- What Justin and Andi have taught me working here,
not even just about how to work glass,
it's all these things that are just gonna help me
be more comfortable becoming an adult
and becoming my own designer.
- Nice, Nic.
- How's your perfume bottle design coming?
- It's a lot of parts.
I was in the television series, blown away,
season two on Netflix.
It was really interesting process and experience for me
because I'm so used to working with my one partner.
And so going on the show, you know, first of all,
it's a competition and you know,
we don't compete with each other or with anyone.
And you work with a different assistant, every challenge.
You're also working in a strange studio
and their glass is really different than ours,
their glass is lot stiffer.
I just really appreciate that I had that experience.
It really gave my work a lot of exposure,
which is why I did it in the first place.
- One color, Andi? What do we got going on in here?
- We've got two colors.
We're gonna do the blue.
- Oh, and the white?
- It's the extra light copper with the white on top of it.
- White.
- And Justin I'll hand this off to you
and then I'll grab the pipe.
Will you give a puff for me?
Good. Through the experience of Netflix,
I really wanted to keep the connection going
with these artists.
And so I came up with this idea, let's collaborate.
We're all working on the idea of growth as a theme.
So we'll be releasing one new design
from another artist each month.
And then all the artists on the show are gonna promote
and sell the work.
Nice.
- Right. Where can you cut?
- I could drill on this, crazy on it.
- Love the like, extra cloudiness of those.
- We're working with Osmose. It's an interior design company
with Andee Hess.
- I'm always looking for opportunities to have their work
in our projects because it's so unique
and their ability to think really creatively
and then customize and create these like
other worldly things is amazing.
- Tendrils.
- Yeah.
- Oh yeah look. It's upside down there.
See that?
- Right? It's actually really cool.
- Glass does not like to be drilled
with a giant hole like that.
Sweet. So that was a little tricky.
- Working with people that are so passionate
about what they're doing and have such a wide experience
and knowledge, it just makes for the ultimate project
because they're bringing to the table
something that's never been seen before or realized before.
So it's just always really,
really exciting.
It's like a avant garde fairy garden.
So yeah, which is pretty good.
- It's this amazing gooey fluid, sticky oozy material
when it's hot.
And then when it's cooled and hard,
the way it captures light, reflects light, refracts it,
it's just got so many amazing properties
and we want our work to be all about that.
Like all about celebrating
and highlighting the materials natural inherent properties.