We spoke with Bob Snodgrass, a pioneer and founding father of the glass pipe industry, about his extensive career and his impact on cannabis culture. If you ask some of the oldest and longest-working glass pipe makers in the industry many of them will trace their careers back to Bob Snodgrass, whether they were inspired by his work or whether they actually met him and had the opportunity to learn from him, there is no doubt that Bob Snodgrass formed the epicenter of a glass pipe movement that started in the parking lots of Grateful Dead shows and expanded all over the world.
Bob Snodgrass was first attracted to glassblowing in the early 1970's after he met a lampworker named Chuck Murphy who owned a retail shop in Akron, Ohio. Chuck Murphy had stumbled into glassblowing when he was a teenager thanks to a German scientific blower who was a customer on Chuck's newspaper route. The German man had offered Chuck an apprenticeship and Chuck had taken to the craft, and when Chuck introduced his German glass teacher to cannabis they worked together to develop a joint holder design which Chuck continued to produce after opening his own retail store. When Bob Snodgrass met Chuck Murphy, Bob and his wife were crafting candles and other goods to sell at local shows, flea markets, and fairs, but Bob was a regular cannabis user and Chuck Murphy was one of perhaps only a handful of glassblowers in the world who was making glass smoking implements intended for cannabis users. Very few retail stores were willing to carry any cannabis paraphernalia at all so Bob was surprised and intrigued when he walked past Murphy's shop and saw that he was selling glass joint holders. Snodgrass introduced himself to Chuck Murphy and after some discussion Bob took some of Chuck Murphy's glass out on a wholesale trip and came back with the largest orders that Murphy had ever received.
Since Chuck Murphy wasn't used to filling such large wholesale glass orders he enlisted Bob Snodgrass' help in making the joint holders that were required. Murphy needed to cut a huge number of clear tubing sections to shape into the joint holders, so he tasked Snodgrass with scoring the tubing into sections and fire polishing the ends of each section. Chuck would take the polished sections and quickly shape them into joint holders, and after the order had been filled Bob and Chuck continued to work together while Bob Snodgrass learned the foundational skills of glassblowing. They would regularly take wholesale trips all over the Midwestern United States, finding buyers at 'boutiques' which catered to the growing counterculture of cannabis users who were sometimes referred to as 'heads'; these boutiques were the first prototypical 'headshops' though that term didn't really begin to catch on until later. Certain communities like Ann Arbor, Michigan had particularly active communities of heads that would purchase their work while other communities would shun them entirely.
It was while he was still working with Chuck Murphy that Bob Snodgrass stumbled onto the technique that would become known as glass fuming. Bob had a day job where he performed heat treatments on various types of metals, and he took home some copper filings and began to experiment with melting the filings into glass. Bob and Chuck found that the copper filings would dissolve almost instantly in the high heat of the borosilicate glass, but one day he and Chuck were doing one of these experiments and their torch began to run out of propane. The resulting oxidizing flame caused the copper to fume, staining the glass a bluish-green hue. Bob was fascinated by the result and began to experiment with this accidental technique more, trying various different types of metals until he finally settled on using gold and silver to produce the best colors and the least toxic fumes for the safety of the glassblower. The result was a piece of glass that appeared almost entirely clear when it was clean, but as the inner walls were gradually coated with black cannabis resin the hues of the metal fuming would pop out in a wide range of colors that were dependent on which metal was used for the fuming. Silver would produce various tones of yellow to blue to green, while gold would produce hues ranging from yellow to blushing pink to crimson.
Bob Snodgrass started calling these pieces 'color-changing' pipes, and they would become a hit in the 80's and 90's when Bob Snodgrass started traveling the country to sell his unique creations. By this time there was more competition in the glass pipe market, but nobody was making anything like the color-changing pipes that Bob Snodgrass was producing. At first Bob started traveling during the summer to attend carnivals and shows where he could sell his wares, but in 1986 he set out in a travel van that was outfitted as a mobile glassblowing studio and Bob started following the Grateful Dead and selling his color-changing pipes in the parking lot parties at their shows. Countless Deadheads would wander post Bob's van as he would be crafting a new piece out in the open where everyone could stop and watch him at work. Bob Snodgrass was essentially doing live demonstrations every night, and if you ask around among glassblowers who started their careers around this same time period, many of them will say that they were initially attracted to the craft after watching Bob Snodgrass work in a Dead lot.
Bob Snodgrass' impact on the cannabis pipe industry cannot be fully measured. He helped to found the Eugene Glass School in Oregon, and today glass fuming is one of the very first foundational techniques that new pipe-making glassblowers will learn. Fuming is also a technique that is constantly being experimented with and pushed into new territories by the most innovative modern glassblowers in the industry. Bob Snodgrass continues to work and innovate as well, forever honing his craft and making his living doing the one thing that he loves most. Many of his family members have followed in his footsteps and glassblowing has become a tradition amongst the Snodgrass family. Bob Snodgrass helped to pioneer an industry that today spans across the globe, and as more countries are learning from the mistake of cannabis prohibition this market will only continue to grow. We owe a lot of thanks to Bob Snodgrass and the other early glassblowing pipe makers who helped to pave the way for this incredible and once-taboo subculture. You can check out more of Bob Snodgrass' work over on the Snodgrass Family Instagram page.
