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A History of Glass Torch Making

From the oil lamp and bellows to multi-stage surface-mix and Triple Mix torches: how the glass torch evolved, which makers shaped it, and what is still uncertain.

In-depth guide

By Joe Blanchard, sixteen years on the distribution side of the glass industry · Updated

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The glass torch is the quiet protagonist of flameworking. Every bead, pendant, pipe, and scientific joint starts with a controllable flame, and the story of how that flame got hotter, quieter, and more precise is the story of the craft itself. This is a working history: how the torch evolved, and how it built the community around it.

Note: this is a working history. Anchor facts are cited, but several dates and attributions are approximate and deserve independent verification, where the record is fuzzy, we say so rather than state a guess as fact. If you’re a maker or veteran artist who can sharpen a date or fill a gap, we’d love to talk; primary sources make this better.

From the lamp and bellows to the bench

“Lampworking” is a literal name. Centuries ago, glassworkers shaped soft glass over an oil lamp, pushing air through the flame with a bellows to concentrate the heat. Venetian and Murano beadmakers turned this into a high art, and Murano rod glass still supplies soft-glass benches today (the Moretti and Effetre history follows one of those makers). The principle that still defines the craft was already there: a small, controllable flame lets one person shape glass at a bench, without a furnace.

What changed over the next century wasn’t the idea, it was the fuel, the oxygen, and the torch.

The material that demanded a hotter flame: borosilicate

Soft glass (soda-lime) works at relatively low temperatures, which suited early lamp-and-bellows setups. The arrival of borosilicate, the heat- and thermal-shock-resistant glass familiar from the Pyrex era, raised the bar. Borosilicate is generally credited to the German glass chemist Otto Schott in the late 1800s (sources variously place his low-expansion glass in the 1880s, 1890s), and Corning brought the Pyrex brand of low-expansion glassware to market around 1915. Boro works hotter, so it needed torches that could deliver far more concentrated heat than a lamp ever could; the rise of boro is, by most accounts, a major part of what pushed torch design forward. (The exact dates here vary between sources, treat them as the broad timeline, not precise milestones; the Pyrex, Duran and Simax history goes deeper on the glass itself.) Sources: The Crucible, Corning Museum of Glass.

Fuel and oxygen: the enabling infrastructure

Two infrastructure shifts unlocked modern torchwork:

  1. Better fuel: town gas gave way to propane and natural gas, delivering consistent, high-heat combustion.
  2. Oxygen: burning fuel with pure oxygen rather than air is what makes a bench flame strong enough for borosilicate. It came first from compressed tanks, and later from oxygen concentrators that separate oxygen from room air, which let a home studio run a modest torch without a standing cylinder delivery.

That combination, bottled or piped fuel plus oxygen on demand, is a large part of why serious torchwork moved into home and small studios. Concentrators have limits (one machine feeds a small or mid-size torch, not a production burner at full flame), which the concentrator vs tanks guide covers.

The technology split: surface mix vs premix

As torches matured, two designs emerged that still divide the market:

  • Premix torches combine fuel and oxygen inside the torch. The flame is tighter and faster, long used for hard glass, but noisier and higher-velocity.
  • Surface mix torches keep the gases separate until they exit, mixing and burning at the surface. Flameworkers describe the result as a quieter, gentler, highly adjustable flame that is kinder to colors and versatile across soft glass and boro.

This wasn’t just a technical footnote, it shaped who could make what. Surface-mix flames made delicate color work and large, controlled boro pieces more achievable. The precise origins and earliest attributions of surface-mix torch design are not well documented in the public record, so we describe the distinction rather than claim a definitive “first.” Source: Lampwork Etc..

The American studio-flameworking boom

Through the late 20th century, the broader studio glass movement and a growing interest in pipe/functional and borosilicate art are widely credited with energizing the craft in the United States. Demand grew for torches that were powerful and controllable. Around this scene grew the infrastructure of a real community: forums (Lampwork Etc., TalkGlass), trade shows, and schools that turned isolated tinkerers into a connected field.

The torch makers: a lineage of more power, more control

A handful of manufacturers drove the modern torch forward, each chasing the same two goals, more heat and finer control:

  • National Torch, today a division of Premier Industries, makes premix hand torches such as the 3A-B, which remains in its current catalog.
  • Carlisle (Carlisle Machine Works), a family-owned Millville, New Jersey maker, is one of the older names, founded around 1918. Carlisle says its CC combination burner (a premixed center fire inside a surface-mix outer) was developed with Corning in 1939 (Carlisle CC page). Its CC and the fully surface-mix Mini CC earned a devoted following among beadmakers.
  • Nortel (Minor, Major, Red Max, Rocket), the Toronto maker founded by Peter Norton in 1967, made affordable, learnable surface-mix bench torches a common first bench.
  • Bethlehem, a division of Bethlehem Apparatus Company, says it has made surface-mix glassworking torches since 1950, and every burner in its line is surface mix (Bethlehem technical information).
  • Herbert Arnold began as a one-person business in Weilburg, Germany, on 1 October 1950, and still builds burners, lathes and machines for scientific glass and quartz (Arnold company history).
  • Glass Torch Technologies (GTT) pushed surface-mix design to the front of high-end boro and pipe production, with patented Triple Mix (and later 4-Way Mix) technology and multi-stage torches scaling from the pinpoint Lynx up through powerful production models. Source: GTT Triple Mix.

The founding dates above come from the makers’ own histories; Carlisle’s 1918 and Nortel’s 1967 are the ones we hold without a dated primary page, so treat them as approximate. The throughline matters more than the exact years: every generation added jets, refined mixing, and chased a flame that was both bigger and more controllable.

The modern era: the craft goes online

If the 20th century built the torches, the 21st built the audience. Online education changed who could learn the craft. A generation of studio schools and YouTube instructors moved technique out of closed apprenticeships and into the open, video demos, online classes, and active forums meant a beginner anywhere could watch a flame up close and learn the fundamentals before ever buying a torch.

Suppliers played their part too, spreading technique and gear and lowering the barrier to entry, as trade shows and a maker economy knit the community tighter.

Where it’s going

Torch design keeps advancing, compressed-air injection, smarter multi-stage flames, and more efficient oxygen use, while better concentrators keep making serious work more accessible. The next chapter is being written by a generation that learned online and expects modern tools, modern information, and a modern community.

Key takeaways

  • The craft began with a lamp and bellows; borosilicate demanded a far hotter flame.
  • Propane + oxygen (especially concentrators) made modern torchwork accessible.
  • Surface mix vs premix shaped what artists could make, surface mix unlocked gentle, versatile, color-friendly flames.
  • A lineage of makers, National, Nortel, Carlisle, Bethlehem, Herbert Arnold, and GTT, chased ever more power and control.
  • The modern era’s big shift is online education and community.

Sources

Editor’s note: this is a working history, and several figures are approximate. The Carlisle (1918) and Nortel (1967) founding years and the borosilicate/Pyrex timeline come from manufacturer and museum histories and vary between sources, so we qualify them rather than assert exact years. The earliest surface-mix torch attributions are not well documented publicly. Treat dates as the broad timeline and verify against primary sources before relying on them; if you can sharpen any of this, we’d welcome the correction.

About the author

Written and edited by Joe Blanchard, who spent 2007 to 2023 on the distribution side of the glass industry in Asheville, North Carolina. GlassTorches.com is his independent, manufacturer-first buyer's guide. More about the editor.

How this guide was sourced: figures come from the manufacturer's own pages and manuals where we have them and are labelled as estimates where they are ours; the catalog on this site is the source of truth, and where sources disagree the guide says so. Confirm the current spec with the maker before you buy. How we work.