‘Glass is tasty stuff, glass blowing is addictive’

The work of Willem and Bernard Heesen, his son, is in the collections of various museums worldwide. And that’s because Willem Heesen (1925-2007) decided one day to go for glass blow. Yes, he designed glass, he was head designer at Glasfabriek Leerdam. But if he wanted glass art businesseshe thought, he had to do it himself: “Glass making is the art of sweat, the battle with gravity, you just have to be there.”

You see and hear him say it in a Polygoon newsreel from 1978. “We are in the atmospheric surroundings of the Betuwe town of Acquoy,” says the newsreader, where a former polder pumping station has been given a new purpose. Willem Heesen, “chief designer at Glasfabriek Leerdam for many years”, started his own business a few months ago. The lead designer comes into view, holding a pipe with liquid glass at the end. You see two roaring ovens, in an open fire he turns the glass over and over, he blows into it a new, rounder shape.

In 1978 Bernard Heesen was 20 and studied architecture. He knew nothing about glassblowing: he had never set foot in the glass factory where his father was a designer. What he did know: “At that time, glassblowing was reserved for factories, only there was glass blown there. By the glassblowers, not by the designers: my father had mainly watched all his life. And when he started his own business here, there was an oekaze from the factory: everyone who helps there is fired and loses his pension. So it wasn’t very easy, bankruptcy was soon threatened. Then we started helping, my mother, my brother and I.”

We are in the glass blowing workshop, it’s still the same, only it’s much fuller now. More ovens, but especially more glass objects. There are many hundreds, in all possible colors and with the strangest shapes. They stand on long tables, in windowsills, on the floor. Without exception they have bulges and additions, sometimes you recognize half-made insects, flowers and animals in melted-in ornaments, more often it is pure fantasy. Some objects are more than a meter high, they appear to be staggering, but that is an illusion.

What you also see is the physical difference between the son and his now deceased father, in the video a tall, slim man in a dust coat. Bernard Heesen has a large, heavy body, sweating as he holds the pipes in the fire, walking from oven to oven with the glass still liquid, two buttons of his shirt loosened or undone.

You gave up your studies in architecture.

“I had already designed a small building once, then I discovered that you have to deal with design committees and things like that. Also, as an architect I would have had to live the big life on my own, which didn’t seem like anything to me. And glass is nice stuff. Glass blowing is addictive.”

Glass is good stuff?

“The strange thing for me is that I often don’t like glass as a material at all. It’s cold, it’s awful glas. Beautifully made, people say, completely clear, no bubbles, what quality. So that material plays a bigger role than how it’s made. But I like glass when it’s still in the oven, nice and warm, liquid stuff that you can do almost anything with: cut, pull, hit, blow, swing. All things that are completely opposite to the properties of solidified glass. My glass often also looks liquid, it is a different way of looking at the material. For me it just flows, flows, flows, until we think the thing is pretty much finished.

“So I like that, but perhaps even more importantly: that you cannot do it on your own. There are always more people here, at least two, often three or four: you work as a team. (Bernard Heesen has four employees, some of whom have been working in the glassblowing industry for more than twenty years.) Yes, that is really the most important thing. If I had been an artist, a painter, a sculptor or whatever, if I had to make everything on my own… I would never have been able to do that. Without this collaboration I would soon be asked: for whom, for what and why do I do it all.”

Perhaps the most important thing is that you cannot do this on your own

Do you mean you blow glass to be with people?

“Not that that’s the reason… well, maybe it is. The cheerful thing is also: the things we make are an enlargement of how we work together. We often make very complex things just to be busy with that one thing at the same time – that is, so to speak, a reason why things look the way they do. It is a team effort, where you often no longer know who exactly did what. And because we know each other so well, you don’t have to talk a lot. While at the same time you are dependent on each other, everyone must know exactly what needs to be done and when. And you have to be able to blindly trust that it will happen that way.”

How does your way of working compare to perfection?

“Not.”

Because you don’t like that either.

“No. Well, what is perfection. Nienke, one of my employees – accomplices, I call them – comes more from the design field. She has exactly what the result should be in mind. Me too, but if things go differently halfway through, that’s also possible. Sometimes things go completely wrong and you have to throw it away. But sometimes I have made something that I am very satisfied with, then I think I have achieved that kind of perfection.”

What are you satisfied with?

“What the thing looks like, anyway. Perfection, especially with glass, is often meant as well made, no flaws, pure. That does not interest me. The best part is when things get tough, when I don’t know exactly what to think about it.”

Do you ever go to glass museums?

“Hardly, so to speak, I prefer to go to other museums. It really is a world of glass makers and glass lovers, isn’t it, I don’t really care for that. If somewhere glass is blown here, but I am an outsider. A lot of people think I don’t make glass art.”

That you make kitsch?

“I don’t know, I’m out of it. And I think that’s funny. Nice, too. But what were we talking about?”

Whether you see yourself as an artist. Your objects are in museum collections.

“It seems I am. The funny thing is: just with a little bit of glass blowing.”

And architecture? Is there a connection between what you do now and your studies?

“I’m glad that I learned a certain way of looking at things there. Researching, analyzing, inventing: that’s what I started doing with glass. Without that background, I might have started making glasses and vases as a glassblower. And I never did that, it was straight away: see what you can do with that crazy stuff, start pulling nice, thick threads.”

Perfection, especially with glass, is often meant as beautifully made, no flaws, pure. That does not interest me

You’re a sturdy man. How important is physicality?

“Very bad, it is a physical profession. When I was young and brash, I pushed myself to the limits of heat and strength. That’s a tempting thing: what you can lift and turn in terms of heat and weight. Sometimes things are so big that you can no longer control them. That a fight breaks out between the glass blower and the thing hanging on the pipe. That also makes it fun.”

I just lifted a small candlestick, I didn’t realize it would be so heavy.

“I am no longer as strong as I used to be. Now it’s the girls on my team with the muscles, they’re all really strong. When we’re working on big, heavy stuff, and I get a little exhausted, they take over. I actually only compose.”

An intimate question: how do you view your life, how things turned out?

“That depends on my mood.”

How’s your mood?

“Pretty relaxed now. On the one hand…”

He is silent for a moment. Dan: “It’s complicated to answer. I tend to separate my glassblowing and my private life. Knowing that that is an artificial separation, of course. But you can at least say that I was very lucky with glass blowing. The other side is: these activities have eaten up the other part of my life a bit. I sometimes wonder: am I still doing things on the side?

You say ‘cheerful’.

“Glass blowing takes up a large part of my being, so to speak. Which doesn’t leave much for other things. That sometimes bothers me.”

Did you miss those things?

“I miss that now, let me put it this way. Yes, I think it is. Then sometimes I feel sad. And another time very happy.”

You live alone?

He smiles. “A quick conclusion.”

Perfection, especially with glass, is often meant as well made, no flaws, pure. That does not interest me

It was a bit obvious. But at the same time are you proud of what you have achieved, is that a way of looking at things for you?

He is silent again for a moment. “Proud, hm. I think that’s a bit… I’m happy.”

And by that you mean?

“I actually think… I think that I have somehow achieved something that can continue. I like that… I once decided: I would take this over from my father. And that I have managed to give it my own face, and that it can continue soon: that makes me happy. I would find it dramatic that if I stopped, this would cease to exist altogether. And I don’t have that feeling now, I don’t have to worry because the girls will continue it. And that, so to speak, gives you more energy to continue. Because you don’t have to wonder: why am I still doing it.”

If you had to say: what is art, what would you say?

Silence, he snorts. “I’ve probably thought about that before, but… it’s so complicated. It is a catchall concept. And I think eighty percent too… but sometimes it happens that I see completely useless things that affect me, that’s what I call art. They come to me because of more than just how they look. I don’t think I can describe it any better.”

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