Fire into Ice: Adventures in Glass Making

Lorraine Douglas is the youth services co-ordinator at the Winnipeg
Public Library.

James Houston, artist, adventurer, and author of numerous adult and
children’s books, gives emphasis to his own ideas and designs in
describing the creation of Steuben glass sculptures. Following a poetic
account of his life in the Arctic in the 1950s, he describes his
invitation to design glass for Steuben in New York. In Manhattan, he
melts in the heat and misses his Arctic friends and the “cold, clean,
open country.” In discussing the collaborative creation of glass, he
provides excellent descriptions of the development of each of his
sculptures. His first piece was a freestanding dinosaur with a long
neck. From there he moved on to dolphins, which dive gracefully into a
solid block of crystal. Among his more poignant sculptures is a solitary
blue whale. A number of his works—including polar bears and ice
hunter—reflect his experiences in the Far North. The sharp color
photographs are as elegant and evocative as the accompanying text. This
volume would be of great interest to glass collectors and those
interested in fine crafts. Highly recommended.