Photos by Caroline Lester
completing his second semester so that he could focus more on his job, so he graduated with a certificate as opposed to a degree. By that time, he was already building pieces for Atmar’s regular catalogue, such as boiling flasks, addition funnels, and drying apparatuses. His daughter Mallory was born in 1987, and her brother Preston followed two years later. Smith often moved for work at the beginning of his career, but he set up a miniature glass studio wherever he lived. One of his houses had an adjoining gray, two-story barn about the size of a one-car garage. He set up a torch on the second floor and worked on repairs during nights and weekends. “It’s shaking in the wind,” Mallory said, recalling one day from her childhood. “But Dad’s up there with the radio on, blowing glass.” Mallory was six or seven years old when she first learned how to use a glassblowing torch herself. Her father guided her hands for the first hour or so, and then stepped back, watching at a safe distance. She made marbles, pendants, and Christmas ornaments. “It was a cool experience to have him say, ‘You are smart enough and trustworthy Daryl Smith calls this torch the “workhorse of the enough that you can handle glassblowing industry.” this,’” Mallory said. Still, working with a flame frightened her. Making larglem Community College and Lancaster, and er pieces of glass required big flames. “When worked part time for the rest of the semester. you’re knee-high with a grasshopper, you’re During the summer of 1986, he began working scared of it,” she said. Her younger brother full time. was often there, right beside her. He learned to As the summer drew to a close, Smith found blow glass from his father as well. out that his wife was pregnant. In order to keep Smith spent the next few years working for their health insurance, he needed to work full small glass companies on the east coast before time, Smith said, “That was like, bust-ass time!” he landed a job with Kontes Glass, the largest He spent sixty hours a week—twenty at school glass manufacturer in the United States at the and forty at his job—blowing glass to support time. At Kontes, Smith pushed his craft beyond his growing family. He left the program after standard scientific glassware and began mak-
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