Light my fire

By Erin McGrath
Media General News Service
Published: June 30, 2008

In a small corner at the Alberene Soapstone Co. in Schuyler, two Nelson County artists are hard at work.

As soft, soulful Spanish music plays in the background, Jay and Steph Rostow of Wingina use oxygen and propane torches to bend and shape glass into rainbow-hued colorful pieces of jewelry.

Jay, who is originally from California, keeps a thick glass rod turning in his hands as he dips it into the heat of the torch to shape it.

“It starts to become like a flow — or your own little dance, if you will,” Jay said.

“It can be unnerving sometimes, dealing with a hot piece of glass that’s starting to sag. You have to keep it moving,” he said, to prevent the piece becoming misshapen by gravity’s pull.

The Rostows have been doing lampwork — the term used for their type of glasswork — for almost five years now.

“Neither of us thought of ourselves as being artistic or creative in that way,” Steph said.

They found, once introduced to glasswork, that they really liked it.

Jay learned the trade while visiting his brother in California. When he returned, he passed it onto Steph.

“We’re pretty much self-taught as far as it goes,” Jay said.

They work at their shop in the soapstone company’s warehouse, which has also doubled as a motorcycle repair and storage area.

Jay and Steph heat glass rods and tubes with the torches and graphite instruments to make beads, pendants, marbles and other pieces. Color can be added to the clear glass by mixing it with differently-colored glass or by heating metals into the glass. A piece then goes to a small kiln for annealing, a process that heats the glass, then slowly cools it to harden it while reducing brittleness.

While Jay is working on his quarter-sized pendants, Steph is carefully placing drops of different colored glass onto a pea-sized bead. Beads are one of her favorite things to make, Steph said.

Their work can be seen almost every Saturday at the Nelson Farmer’s Market in Nellysford. Other than that, their sales come by word of mouth.

“This has been a lot of fun,” Jay said. “It doesn’t make you a ton of money, but it’s a fun hobby.”

Eventually, the Rostows want to move their workshop from Schuyler closer to their home in Wingina.

“This is nice because it’s something that we can do together,” Steph said.

“Eventually, it’s something that we’d like to have so that we can do it at home. You don’t always feel like driving somewhere to do something. If it’s 8 o’clock at night and we feel like blowing some glass, you can just go out and do it.”

Glass jewelry isn’t all the couple creates. For nearly two years, the Rostows have been making wine vinegar on the soapstone company property.

They came up with the idea of making wine vinegar from winery waste products after working for a local winery, Steph said.

“We started to experiment about two years ago with some crocks at our house,” Steph said. “We made some really good batches, and we made some really not-so-good batches.”

In all, he said, “… people seem to really like it.”