tanding in front of a table saw, goggles on, feeding the
umpteenth board through the blades to make a perfect
cut, Cynthia Krupnik ’11 was tired. She’d already lost
track of how many boards she cut and had to force
herself to wake up and focus before she lost a finger. Fortunately for
Krupnik, her livelihood wasn’t at stake as it was for the workers she
was learning about in “Industrial/Arts: An Interdisciplinary History of
U.S. Workers, Skill and Artistry.”
Instructor Helen Tegeler demonstrates how to blow glass at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in downtown Reading. photo: John Pankratz
This interdisciplinary course, taught by assistant professor of history Gerald Ronning, Ph.D., is a scholarly introduction to the history of the U.S. working class combined with hands-on experience in cabinetmaking, ceramics and glass blowing—crafts that were once considered industrial occupations.
Until the Industrial Revolution began in 1820, products such as clothing, furniture, glassware and pottery were carefully crafted by skilled artisans. With the introduction of electricity, improved transportation and manufacturing, those products quickly went from being handmade and homemade to being produced by machines in factories. The skilled artisans who once crafted them became employees working for a wage.
Work in these factories and textile mills went on at a grueling pace, and the labor was repetitive and dangerous. Bridget Murray’10 says she can’t believe some of the things that factory owners subjected workers to. “Back in the early days of factories, employers threatened (they really did in some places) to paint over windows to get workers to focus on their work.”
Krupnik, an art, psychology and religious studies major, says she really got a feel for how people in the late 1800s and early 1900s must have felt working in factories. “They had gone from participating in every aspect of wood work to cutting one side of a board for an entire day. I could tactically understand the frustration they [workers] would have felt and see their reasons for starting unions and protests for better labor conditions.”
Krupnik’s realization is exactly the reason Ronning proposed the idea for the course. While he had already been teaching a course in workingclass history, adding the studio component, held at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in downtown Reading, took the intellectual learning experience and turned it into a physical experience, he says. “We discussed the way people think about these kinds of jobs; the muscle, brains, skills and imagination that it takes to do them.”
During a class at the GoggleWorks in 2007 Ronning stood in front of a 2,100-degree furnace and thought about what it might have felt like to do that kind of work every day.
Ronning got the idea when he himself had a hands-on lesson in glass blowing. During a class at the GoggleWorks in 2007—a Father’s Day gift from his wife—Ronning says he stood in front of the 2,100-degree furnace and thought about what it might have felt like physically, emotionally and intellectually to do that kind of work every day. He wanted students to have the same experience.
Students spent a total of 12 hours in each area and were taught by GoggleWorks artists. Kim Chaplin, who has been working in ceramics for nine years, taught students how to work on a ceramics wheel making cups, bowls and plates, and how to hand-build using pinch pots and slab construction. “My goals for students were to get them at least comfortable on the wheels and to show them that it is a skill that takes years to master,” Chaplin says. “I wanted to instill a respect for handmade objects and the time it takes to master these arts.”
“Working on a wheel…is a lot harder than you think it is,” says Murray, an art and digital media major. “Just centering the clay on the wheel takes so much energy and muscle from all parts of your body.”
Ceramics was Krupnik’s favorite part of the class. “The wheel was almost therapeutic,” she says. However, while Krupnik was relaxing in the ceramics studio, she says she wondered how different the atmosphere would have been if students had to create pieces based on a model as factory workers back then did. “The relaxation I felt would have become anxiety and fear of losing a job,” she acknowledges.
“Back in the early days of factories , employers threatened (they really did in some places) to paint over windows to get workers to focus on their work.”
- Bridget Murray ’10
Fear of losing one’s job was common. Skilled workers were eliminated so that factory owners could employ cheaper, unskilled immigrant workers, and because of the increase in production, factory owners were also able to cut wages and lay off large numbers of workers.
According to Ken Fones-Wolf’s Glass Towns: Industry, Labor and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890-1930s, one of four required course texts, glass once produced from beginning to end by European-trained craftsmen began to be produced by several individuals who each had mastered a single part of the trade. This was referred to as a “shop” system.
For history and art major Alex Bolaski ’10, the thought of blowing glass was a bit intimidating at first. “It is definitely hot in the glass shop when everything is on full blast…you get hot fast and you definitely want to bring a lot of water with you,” he says. However, Bolaski says he ended up having fun in the glass shop, so much fun that he forgot to think about the people in the 1800s and 1900s who blew glass for a living day in and day out. “If I was doing that all day long, six days a week, I think my attitude might be a little different.”
The “Industrial/Arts” course was offered for the first time during the fall semester. Ronning, who has had plenty of experience “in a previous life” working hands-on jobs as a cabinetmaker, guitar maker, forklift operator and coffee factory worker, learned a few things too. “Dealing with students in more of a team way and getting to know them on a different level was new for me,” he says. “The more casual interaction was both uncomfortable and fruitful all at once. It challenged me as a professor to think of students in new ways.”
Although Bolaski jokes that he’ll probably get teased by his friends for saying it, “This class truly was a ‘different way of thinking.’”