Late 20th Century Craig Zweifel Art Glass Iridescent Gold and Red Paperweight Vines and Berrys

Craig Zweifel Art Glass Iridescent Gold and Red Paperweight

Craig Zweifel was born in 1944 in San Diego, and raised in Oakland, California. He began working with glass under Dr. Robert Fritz at San Jose State University in 1966, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969. That summer, Zweifel built his first studio in Jackson, Wyoming. In 1972, he returned to California for graduate studies, receiving his Master’s degree in Glass Design at UCLA in 1974. Returning to the Rockies, he lived and worked at his studio near Ketchum, Idaho for 30 years, then moved to Southern Oregon in 2004. His first priority on arrival there was completing his new glass studio! Craig met his wife Anny, a former jewelry artist, at a craft fair, and, in 1986, she moved from the Chesapeake Bay to the Rocky Mountains to marry him. She became an important addition to the studio. Intending to take a short break from jewelry design, Anny got involved in the design and creation of glass – first the faceting and polishing; more recently assisting with the hot work – and has been an integral part of Zweifel Art Glass ever since. Craig Zweifel’s glass work can be recognized by its distinctive iridescent colors – the result of his signature process, which fuses silver to the molten glass at 2100 degrees, adds overlays of glass to create patterns, then crystallizes the surface. As the surface crystallizes, colors bloom into being – covering each piece with its own singular array of hues. Each piece is signed and dated on completion. Every piece is created individually, and is FREE BLOWN- no molds or machines are used. As a result, every Zwiefel glass piece has subtle variations in color, shape, and surface texture – no two are ever exactly the same, even pieces of the same general size and pattern. The unique aspects of the process make every piece one of a kind.