Most ribbon-cuttings are over in a snip. At Kinship Glassworks on Seemans Lane, owner Christopher DeMott burned through the ribbon with “a gather of melted glass,” the Milford-Orange Times reported in September 2023. Mayor Richard Smith, Alderman Anthony Giannattasio and the Milford Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Simon McDonald were there to watch.
The ceremony was late. DeMott had opened the studio during the COVID pandemic, the Times noted, and had been hosting artists and first-time glassblowers ever since. For a studio built around a furnace, it was a fitting way to open.
A spark in 1986
DeMott told News 12 Connecticut that his passion started in 1986, the first time he saw molten glass shaped by hand. According to the studio’s website, he earned a BA from Franklin Pierce University in 1989. He has studied glass at some of the best-known schools in the field: the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Penland School of Crafts, UrbanGlass and the Corning Museum of Glass. He later taught at UrbanGlass, Sterling Art Glass and the Brookfield Craft Center.
From 1996 to 2005 he owned and ran his own studio, The Lodge, in New Milford, where the website says he took part in “many different scholastic internship programs.” His work has been in galleries around the country and in HOME, Fairfield County and Housatonic Home magazines.
Kinship, the website says, is where “Christopher’s journey has come full circle.”
Why ‘Kinship’
The studio’s home page opens with a dictionary definition: “the state of being related to the people in your family” and “a feeling of being close or connected to other people.” Then the site, written in DeMott’s voice, explains the 5,000-square-foot studio, learning center and gallery he founded in 2020.
“It’s a testament to the support of my family and friends and a lifetime of trials and tribulations,” he writes.
The site also describes the work: “I don’t just see this as a job, but as a passion, and grateful for every day to be able to create works of art from customers’ beautiful ideas.”
‘The glass won’t wait for you’
DeMott doesn’t run the hot shop alone, and the studio’s short staff bios read like small stories of their own.
Instructor Brian Cuzzocreo grew up helping his father in the wood shop. His father’s advice, as the website tells it, was to “look ahead to the next step, and to have that next tool ready and waiting.” Glass works the same way, the bio says, except there’s no time to stop and look for the tool: “If you’re not ready for the next step the glass won’t wait for you.” Cuzzocreo started working hot glass in 2010 at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where he often came in early to light the furnaces. “Every motion you make is engrained into the piece, every breath and every turn of the pipe impacts the outcome,” he says. “The piece itself is the physical history of your actions during its creation.”
Instructor Ryan Furbush found glass at Franklin Pierce, DeMott’s alma mater, in 2010, when the school opened its glassblowing program to any student who wanted to try. He had a background in mass communications and music and still plays alto sax in a local band, Drop Party. “It’s amazing how every time you step foot into a glass studio there is something new to learn,” he says.
Anyone can try
Kinship is built to let the public in. The website says the studio exists partly to teach “the fundamentals of our craft to the public.” Showing News 12 one of the studio’s furnaces, DeMott said, “There’s about 300 pounds of glass in there.” He described a range of work. “We do a lot of made-to-order work, including memorial pieces where you can incorporate your loved one’s ashes in glass. And then we do a glass experience, which gives people the chance to try it themselves.”
According to the studio’s classes page, in a glass experience visitors choose a project and colors, design the decoration, and then work step by step with an instructor to make a “one of a kind keepsake.” The glass has to cool, so finished pieces are ready to take home within 24 hours. The studio also books birthday parties and team-building groups, and offers introductory and next-level glassblowing courses. The classes page says the next-level course is meeting for three hours per session this fall.
With the holidays coming, the studio’s online shop leans seasonal. It lists blown-glass pumpkins as a best seller, along with round ornaments, candy canes and snowmen.
What keeps him going
The quote on Kinship’s home page isn’t DeMott’s. The site attributes it to Aristotle: “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” After more than 30 years in glass, years of teaching and one ribbon melted instead of cut, the studio sums up its mission on the same page: “Sometimes in today’s modern world we can forget the beauty in the natural, beautiful and handmade.”
KEY FACTS
Business: Kinship Glassworks
Address: 23 Seemans Lane, Milford, CT
Phone: 475-549-8559
Email: kinshipglassworks@att.net
Founded: 2020
Reader poll: Have you been to Kinship Glassworks in Milford?
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Photos courtesy of Kinship Glassworks (kinshipglassworks.com).
