Meet Alyssa Ziemba and Jake Garretson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alyssa Ziemba and Jake Garretson. 

Alyssa and Jake, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We (Jake & Alyssa) both graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art. After graduating, we moved to Oberlin and wanted to start our own business. When the COVID-19 shutdown happened, it gave us a lot of time. We ended up taking that time to build our own glass-blowing furnace and studio. Now, we travel around Northern Ohio and sell our handmade glass at local art shows and farmers’ markets. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When we first started our business in the beginning of 2020 a lot of shows were being canceled due to COVID. Now that events are opening back up, we are excited to be out in the world selling our glass again. 

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We have a wide variety of handblown glass items from tumblers, oil dispensers, vases, soap dispensers, earrings, and seasonal items. Our goal is to make Handblown Glass affordable to many people. We have specially designed our glass furnace to allow us to work quickly and at a small scale, making our prices more affordable to our customers. 

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
We took a major risk when we decided to build our furnace. We had originally purchased a commercial glass furnace before the COVID shutdown. We were then notified that they wouldn’t be able to complete our order because of supply shortages after we had already paid for half of the furnace. We were faced with a hard decision, either wait until they could finish our order (which they said could take months-years) or build our own glass furnace (even though we had very minimal knowledge about that process). Jake ended up spending a lot of time on the phone calling anyone and everyone he knew that had any sort of experience in building glass furnaces and he began the time-intensive and expensive process of building our own glass furnace. 

Funny enough, a year and a half after we have built our furnace and have been using it, we were notified that our previous order was completed and ready to ship. Now we have 2 small-scale glass furnaces (named George and B in loving memory of Jake’s grandparents). 

Pricing:

• In-person (Farmer’s market) prices are $30 and under
• Online prices are more expensive because we professionally ship everything to make sure it gets to you safely
• We do custom orders— email us for more information

Contact Info:

• Email: Firesideglassart@gmail.com
• Website: Www.firesideglassart.com
• Instagram: @firesideglassart