Peter David

Has the making of glass art down to a science

Peter David does windows. In fact, as the big brain behind Peter David Studio — creators of art and architectural glass — he does them like nobody else. That's why architects from the Northwest and points beyond keep his number handy. And that's why he can select jobs he finds the most creative.

"We hardly ever make the same thing twice," he says.

Yet, he is professionally untrained and has never advertised.

"I was up in New England on a little second honeymoon. I was taking pictures of the fall leaves, and they looked like stained glass. I started shooting leaves in a series. And then I saw that same pattern in glass."

He had to see more.

"I started making glass on my kitchen table. The next thing I did was sell my motorcycle, bought an air compressor and started doing etching."

David moved his family from New York to Seattle some 30 years ago and shopped himself as both a glass artist and a handyman — just in case.

"My first job was picking rocks out of the yard and putting them in a bucket. And I ended up making glass for those people."

Now his fine art can be found in all the best places. In one home, a wall of David glass resembles water frozen midflow. Other homes, hospitals and businesses feature his work as sculpture, stairs, shower walls, desk tops, tables, counters, cabinet fronts and ceiling insets.

In his intimate South Lake Union shop of eight employees, three are his own kids: Nathan, 33, fabrication/polishing; Beth, 31, etcher; and Jordan, 29, production manager.

"They all went out like they were supposed to," David says, "but they each found their way back."

There are nine kilns in his studio and lots of heat (kilns cooking at 1,600 degrees), but no angst, no animosity. A gentle man in a fragile business. And David has creation down to a science. He and his sons built both the kilns and the computer system. The kilns call him on the phone when he is needed.

"When they hit a certain temperature I have a three- to five-minute window to get there, or we get to start over," he says.

The creative end comes in part from "just being a Curious George about everything," says David, who at age 55 also has the kind of appetite for history and archeology that other men have for, say, the National Football League.

"I'm alive and in the middle of an amazing world," he says. "That's why I love science."