Glass

Gianni Toso believes that God was the first glass blower, an idea that fascinates Mr. Toso, a master glass blower and Orthodox Jew."Sixty-two percent of the Earth is silica," said Mr. Toso of the compound used to make glass. "God [gathered] Adam from the Earth. How we are alive is because God blew into the pipe."For 1,000 years, natives of the Italian island of Murano near Venice have been making the finest colored glass in the world. Mr. Toso is one of them, part of a large family of chemists, artists and craftsmen who have been working with glass for 500 years.

Anthony Corradetti lives in a glass house.Number 1109 Hollins Street is the place where the potash, silica sand, soda ash, lime and barium emerge from a furnace and a kiln as works of glass art.One day last week, the Southwest Baltimore glass blower got an invitation from the White House. One of his vases had been selected for its permanent collection as part of a celebration of American crafts."I got to shake the President and Mrs. Clinton's hand and have my picture taken. I was nervous thinking about it. Then I saw my peers there and I calmed down.

A renaissance festival seems a singularly appropriate place to find R. Foster Holcombe. Not only does Mr. Holcombe seem perfectly at home in the boots, leather breeches and jerkin of a 16th century artisan, but he is involved in an ancient art form undergoing its own renaissance."

Dr. Frederic A. Glass, a pioneering industrial dermatologist who lectured widely on the subject, died May 27 of cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 89.He was born and reared in Milwaukee, the son of Russian immigrant parents who operated a dry goods store. It was while living in Milwaukee that he developed a love of the performing arts and planned to become a professional drama critic until becoming ill with influenza, which permanently affected his hearing.After abandoning his plans of being a critic, he earned a degree in philosophy in 1932 from Marquette University and enrolled in medical school.

Charles A. Glass, a former Baltimore police detective and an avid pool player, died June 28 at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Lebanon, Pa., after a long illness. He was 58. Mr. Glass was born in Baltimore and grew up in the Govans area. After graduating from City College, he joined the Navy at age 17 and served aboard the destroyer-submarine USS Hunter during the Cuban missile crisis. He later served aboard the USS Camp and the USS Enterprise. Mr. Glass attended the police academy shortly after his tour of duty.

AIKEN, S.C. -- In a milestone on the road to cleaning up after 40 years of making atomic bombs, the Department of Energy dedicated a $1.3 billion plant yesterday to deal with its most hazardous wastes: millions of gallons of highly radioactive sludges and liquids in decaying steel tanks.The department said the plant, the largest of its kind in the nation, would be tested for two years with non-radioactive wastes and would begin operating in 1992.More than half the radioactivity from the nation's military waste is held in 51 underground tanks at the Savannah River Site here, each with 750,000 to 1.3 million gallons of waste.

They've been playing with the angels for weeks now in Bobbie Burnett's basement.Dozens of volunteers -- engineers, retired women, teen-agers from a local church -- have been cutting bits of colored glass, fitting translucent wings and silvery halos on stained-glass angels, washing off the acid used before soldering, then fitting their fragile artwork into white boxes.Profits from the $30 cherubs go for cancer research at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center in Baltimore and the Anne Arundel Medical Center.

Three people, including a 5-year-old girl, were injured Monday afternoon when a strong wind blew out a large plate-glass window at Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store in Parole.The girl, Pamela Maloney, of Annapolis, was listed in good condition yesterday at Anne Arundel General Medical Center. Police said the girl suffered cuts on the top of her head, her right wrist and her left ring finger.The damage to the store came during a violent thunderstorm in theAnnapolis area that toppled trees, downed power lines and caused widespread damage throughout the city.

Even to most Depression glass or art deco collectors, Ruba Rombic might as well be a Latin American dance or a liquor mixed with Coke. Not many folks know about this rare Cubist glassware, once called "the craziest thing ever brought out in tableware." Even fewer have seen Ruba Rombic, which was manufactured by the Consolidated Lamp and Glass Co. in Coraopolis, Pa., between 1928 and 1932 and bore small black paper labels with gold block letters proclaiming itself "an epic in modern art." It looks like sculpted blocks of ice.Ruba Rombic will be sizzling hot soon, thanks to Kevin and Barbara Kiley of West Orange, N.J. More than 350 pieces from their definitive collection of this faceted geometric glass which manipulates light and shadows will be for sale from Sept.

John Henry Miller, a former restaurateur who founded a stained-glass business, died of heart failure Feb. 8 at a hospital in Billings, Mont. He was 88 and lived in Kingsville for nearly half a century before moving to Cheyenne, Wyo., 15 years ago. A member of the family that founded the now-defunct Miller Brothers Restaurant in downtown Baltimore, he managed the Kingsville Inn on Belair Road from 1950 to 1962, and owned Perry House in the Perry Hall...