You betcha! Send an email describing what you want. I'll let you know how I plan to create your piece and my price. I especially encourage orders for Goddesses, Dolls and Mermaids with a special person's skin tone and hair color.

Don't forget to order fan pulls for your home. Brighten your day by placing a little beauty in a surprising place.

Lampworking is an ancient craft dating back to the Mesopotamians (c. 2450 BC). Today, lampworking is is practiced using modern gas torches and compressed oxygen.

My torch is mounted on my workbench. One hose is connected to an oxygen generator. The second hose is connected to a regular barbecue style propane tank and regulator that is located outdoors.

To create a bead or small sculpture, I start with a rod of glass that is approximately 1/4 inch in diameter (5mm) and 18 inches (45mm) long. The end of the glass rod is introduced into the flame, sometimes with much sputtering and flying pieces of red hot glass. The rod is kept in the flame until it is molten. I then start "painting" the glass onto a coated steel mandrel for a bead, or I build my creation on the end of another rod of glass. I use the varying viscosity of the cooling glass to give form to the sculpture. This is lampworking in its simplest form.

Why sure!

No one knows when glass was discovered, but it has been found in Mesopotamian archaeological sites dating to around 2450 BC. Syrians were manufacturing glass by 1700 BC and soon thereafter (maybe 250 years) the Egyptians were making core vessels. Some lovely examples of ancient core vessels can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

Glassblowing was known in Syria by 100 AD. It was practiced by the Romans and continued in the Middle East during the Dark Ages of Medieval Europe. Glass blowing gained importance in Venice around 900 AD and soon (within 300 years) some glass blowers were creating lampworked beads. The Venetians had a monopoly on good quality glass until the sixteenth century when some glass blowers escaped from captivity on the island of Murano and settled in Germany. In the 1600's knowledge about glass production and manipulation was spreading throughout Europe. Most glass was manufactured through offhand glass blowing techniques but a lampworking tradition developed along side its more dramatic glass blowing sibling. We have drawings from this period showing women using oil lamps and small blowpipes. Hence, the term "lampworking".

In the late 1800's, the father and son team of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka was commissioned to produce a large collection of glass botanical flowers. Known as the Blaschka Flowers, they are on public display at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By all means, go see them. If you ever attempted lampworking, you will be astounded.

As industrial mechanization during the 1800's and 1900's made artisans less relevant, glass blowing and lampworking almost vanished from the United States. They were not revived until the early 1960's when the studio glass movement began to focus interest on glass as art.

Corning Glass Works developed Pyrex in the early 20th century. Generically known as borosilicate glass, it has a higher melting temperature than the "soft" glass I use. Sign makers use lampworking and borosilicate glass to produce neon signs.

This information was mostly gleaned from "Contemporary Lampworking" by Bandhu Dunham. There is far more comprehensive information on the history of lampworking in his book.  It is well worth reading with a strong emphasis on borosilicate glass.