Emotions in Glass Ettore Sottsass Translated from Italian by Rodney Stringer When you design glass objects and hope to make them, or hope someone will make them for you, you go through roughly three exciting moments. The first is when you think you've got an idea and think–or flatter yourself–that the idea really is an idea, that it really is a strange apparition, somehow emerging from the general confusion of ideas, which actually boils down to nothing, to the nothingness that was and suddenly is no more–because the idea has occurred; a nothingness–as has often been said–that has suddenly been enlightened. The second is when you see that the glass, or its design, is about to be turned into glass. You know it is going to become glass, but you can't yet make it out. You see a sort of ghost of what the glass will be, a limp, shining and colorless ghost, red-hot, untouchable and elusive, as most ghosts are–they say–like flames, fire, and the light of fire. I have never actually made glass with my own hands. I have never blown into the long blowing iron to make a piece of glass, and I don't think I would even be capable of picking a glob of burning glass out of the lake of red-hot glass at the bottom of the boca del forno. I know absolutely nothing about these risks and pleasures, and I certainly never will know anything about these secret pockets
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