Taiwan Today

Hsinchu’s glass industry began in the early 1920s, when rich resources of silica and natural gas—the raw material and fuel for making glass—were found there. The area has been the capital of Taiwan’s glass sector for nearly a century, supplying the market with everything from optical glass to daily glassware. An easy way of getting an overview of how this industry evolved is taking a tour of the Hsinchu Municipal Glass Museum. While the history and the science may be a little dry for some visitors, most will certainly enjoy the museum’s collection of glass arts created with different techniques by local master craftsmen.

Visitors may find that nearly all these master craftsmen share the same experience of how they entered the trade: they started young as apprentices in one factory or another, crafting glass animals, beads and items made to order by original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Thomas Lin, however, began his career quite differently. Lin is a Hsinchu native born in 1961. At that time, Hsinchu had just started making small glass products targeting the domestic market. The focus then shifted to the larger export market in the 1970s. The mass-produced products could hardly lay claim to being “artistic,” but thanks to low production costs, the glass factories were making good profits at the time.

Lin’s first encounter with glass crafts was at one such factory when he was a vocational high school student. At a business run by the father of one of his classmates, Lin was fascinated by the craftsmen’s techniques of pulling and twisting melted glass bars into the shapes of all kinds of animals and plants. He asked if he could work there on vacations to pick up the techniques, but there was no room for Lin while everyone was busy filling orders. Instead, Lin’s classmate set up the equipment in a corner, demonstrated some basic techniques and left Lin some glass bars to play with. “I was really interested in it, so I kept working on it whenever I had time,” Lin recalls. “It didn’t take me too long to be good enough to fill in on some of the simpler work when the factory was shorthanded.” In his high school years, Lin not only managed to familiarize himself with lampworking—a technique for manipulating molten pieces of glass—but became proficient enough at it to make some pocket money. The part-time career, however, was interrupted when he entered Tainan University of Technology, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial management.

Changing Times

The glass industry in Hsinchu underwent some major changes in the years Lin was away. From the 1980s, Hsinchu’s role as an OEM supplier was gradually replaced by towns in mainland China and other places with lower production costs. As the buyers were redirecting their orders to these places, many of Hsinchu’s factories either closed down or moved overseas. The craftsmen were left to move with their employers or change profession. So when Lin returned home after completing his university education and then compulsory military service, there were not many job opportunities in decorative glass making.

Meanwhile, industrial glass production and other high tech industries started to boom after the establishment of the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (now Hsinchu Science Park) in 1980. A friend who was a manager of a company at the science park that made wafers asked Lin if he wanted to work there. Lin had no idea what a wafer was, but was told that working with quartz—a raw material for wafer manufacturing—was similar to working with glass. “It sounded good, as I thought I could probably re-familiarize myself with some of the glass techniques,” Lin says. “And since I’d just got home and needed a job, I took it without giving it much thought.”

The chemical properties of quartz and glass are similar. The processes of making wafers and crafting lampwork glass are also similar. There are, however, huge differences in the amount of fun involved and between the sense of achievement of completing a piece of wafer and, say, a glass swan. “Glass melts at 1,200 degrees Celsius and quartz at 1,600,” Lin says. “That 400 degrees can drive you crazy when you’re not doing something you really like.” A month later, Lin resigned from the wafer manufacturer.

He then worked a few jobs here and there and kept working with glass as a hobby. Meanwhile, Hsinchu’s glass industry was about to mount a comeback as government agencies began to take action in an attempt to save the so-called sunset industry—not by the OEM route this time, but through the creation of high-quality goods. As the capital of Taiwan’s glass industry, Hsinchu City organized its first biennial International Glass Art Festival in 1995 to give local artists an opportunity to promote their works and artists from different countries a chance to share their experiences and ideas.

In 1993, the city government also started holding the Golden Glass Award to encourage glass artists. Lin participated in the competition to see how his glassworking technique stacked up. In 1996, he became the first artist in Taiwan to gain a permanent exemption in glass art after winning one of the top three awards in each of the first three competitions. “The permanent exemption means that my works are qualified for all glass exhibitions in the country,” Lin says. “It also means that they don’t want to see me in any glass competitions anymore.”

Since winning the awards, Lin has held several exhibitions in Taiwan and abroad. Maybe it was Lin’s fate to continue his involvement with glass, as it happened that around that time a friend who runs a trading company asked Lin if he was interested in doing OEM manufacturing for an American glass gallery chain based in St. Louis, Missouri. Lin explains that having seen samples from OEM factories elsewhere, the buyer found that the quality of the cheaper products was unacceptable for his high-end glassware and craft shops. “He was looking for someone who could craft pieces good enough for his galleries,” Lin says. “Taiwanese craftsmen were skillful enough to meet the demand.” In 1994, Lin organized a few local craftsmen and founded the Chu Ching Glass Gallery to do OEM and occasionally some original design manufacturing for the American buyer. As it turned out, what came with the demand for higher quality was better pay. While factories for other OEM orders were paid NT$10 (US$0.30) for one piece, Lin was paid NT$20 (US$0.60).

No Fixed Concept

Business between Chu Ching and the US chain lasted for 12 years. During the first several years, the American buyer, who is a glass artist himself, often flew to Hsinchu to discuss designs and techniques with Lin. Talks between the two artists benefited Lin greatly. “I was not trained through the traditional master-apprentice way, so I don’t have a fixed concept of how glass shoul be crafted,” he says. “I’m willing to accept new ideas and try different things—combining different techniques or creating abstract works instead of the traditional figural ones—anything that makes it better.”

His American partner finally turned to cheaper suppliers in mainland China in 2005 and Lin had to find other markets for Chu Ching. For about two years, he tried setting up shop in a few department stores to cultivate the domestic market for high-end glass products and décor, although those outlets have since closed. In addition to his own designs, Lin also began working with other artists such as sculptor and painter Ju Ming, transforming some of the artists’ creations into glass. The early sales results, however, were not very encouraging. “The economy was definitely a reason,” Lin says. “During those two years, buying daily necessities obviously had higher priority than spending money on art.”

Another difficulty Lin encountered was that since the 1990s, the domestic market for high-end glass works has been dominated by two local companies: Liuli Gongfang, which was founded in 1987, and tittot, which began in 1994. The two companies introduced the wax-casting technique and soon dominated the market with designs that have elements drawn from local or Chinese culture. “When people think of glass art, they go directly to those two companies,” Lin says. “And because of their popularity, wax-molding became so popular that most people don’t know that there are also artworks crafted with spun glass, hot sculpture or other lampwork.”

Lin himself has done some wax-molding works. He says that each technique has its strengths and weaknesses. Wax-cast works, for example, allow the production of larger pieces, but are easily copied. While the size of lampwork glass items is limited, on the other hand, they can be very detailed and are difficult to copy since each piece needs to be hand-crafted by an experienced craftsman. “A craftsman needs to pull, twist, or do whatever it takes to turn a softened glass bar into the desired shape before it hardens,” Lin says. “It’s a race against time and temperature.” And while wax-molding glass seems to have become the “mainstream” in recent years, Lin believes that lampwork glass is really Taiwan’s strong point. “We’ve been doing lampwork glass for 50 years since we started making Christmas-tree decorations and small animals,” he says. “We lost our competitive edge because of price, but the skills of many of our craftsmen in the lampwork technique are still there and are way more sophisticated than those of craftsmen elsewhere.”

Struggling in the high-end market, Lin thought of a glass trophy he designed for the 1998 Time Asia-Pacific Advertising Awards, and started to consider giving the gift and souvenir market a try. The idea, it turned out, was more popular than Lin had expected, as there were not any similar products in this part of the market. A local bank, for example, ordered 10,000 individual Chinese zodiac animals as gifts for its major clients. Several other enterprises also ordered souvenirs with designs symbolizing cooperation, inspiration or friendship for their partners or retired staffers. And maybe because glass is somehow related to their trades, many of the high tech manufacturers from Hsinchu Science Park are particularly interested in Lin’s designs. His niche in the market is also secure since each piece of lampwork glass needs to be handcrafted and it is impossible to mass-produce his designs with other techniques. According to Lin, about 90 percent of his income is now generated from the domestic souvenir and gift market.

Financial security allows Lin more time to promote glass art, which has been both encouraging and discouraging. For more than a decade, he has been teaching lampwork glass art at several local junior high schools and a vocational high school as a way to preserve the craft. Unfortunately, none of the students Lin has taught has gone on to enter the trade yet. On the other hand, Lin finds it encouraging that more university design departments now have glass-related programs. Having seen glass works by many artists from different countries, Lin thinks that Taiwan has superior glassworking techniques, but needs a push in design. In fact, one reason he is glad to take intern students from these departments is that he can help them with the technical aspects of glass in order to execute their designs. Glass, after all, is just an ordinary manmade material. It is how a craftsman or designer works his or her creativity and vision into the material that makes the glass shine.

Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw