When Sean Donlon crafts a piece of scientific glassware, he thinks about how that piece of equipment might play a role in a great discovery.
Cornell's only scientific glassblower, Donlon works with researchers who need glass instruments repaired, modified or, sometimes, designed and made from scratch. He applies craftsmanship, problem-solving and a deep understanding of glass to support research and innovation.
"I'm not saying my glass work alone is going to cure cancer," he said, "but it's nice to be a part of a system where people are wanting to make a better world."
Sean Donlon, scientific glassblower with the Cornell Center for Materials Research, crafts a glass teapot in his home workshop.
As part of the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR), he collaborates with researchers across Cornell and with the general public. Glassware is important for many types of research, especially chemistry.
His work isn't only with beakers, solvent bottles and glass manifolds, though. Recently he made protective covers for cameras on a deep-sea submersible, and mosquito feeders designed to hold food for mosquitos in the lab of Courtney Murdock, associate professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The feeders are a crucial piece of equipment, feeding captive mosquitoes that researchers use to study how climate change impacts viral load in mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria and West Nile virus.
Donlon didn't just replicate existing feeders. He made tweaks to the design that made them easier to use. Jared Skrotzki, a technician in the Murdock Lab, and his colleagues visit Donlon when they need to figure out a set up for a new experiment.
"It's very cool to actually go talk to a person here on campus about how would be best do this," Skrotzki said. "He's very inquisitive about whatever anyone's doing and loves to try to understand why we're doing it and what we're expecting to get out of it. It's very awesome that Cornell has these resources."
Donlon repairs a solvent bottle at his workshop in S.T. Olin Hall.
An artist's journey
In a shop in the basement of S.T. Olin, Donlon heats glass objects with a hand torch that can reach temperatures over 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as a lathe holds and spins the object. He holds a small blow tube in his mouth that helps to inflate areas of the glass, but he can still chat as he works.
He has a flow when he works, even when the glass does unexpected things. "It's a humbling experience," he said. "You can be a master at something, but the temperament of glass is fragile, so it can always break.
"It's such a physical dance with the material and the environment."
It is increasingly unusual for universities to operate a glass shop with a full-time technician, according to Jon Shu, associate director of CCMR.
"Glassware inevitably breaks," Shu said. "To have somebody in-house who can repair something within the week is a huge difference from having to send it out for repairs, which might take a month or two. And you don't get that level of customization and improvement that Sean offers."
Donlon crafted glass mosquito feeders that sit atop enclosures in the lab of Courtney Murdock, associate professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The feeders support mosquito populations that researchers are using to study how climate change impacts diseases like malaria and West Nile virus.
When a solvent bottle Donlon was repairing wasn't quite straight he put it back on the lathe and tried again. "I want it to be better than what you can buy in a store," he said.
In college, Donlon studied marine biology. During that time, he got into painting and printmaking. His mom, an artist, connected him to an artists' collective studio where he tried out glassblowing. Donlon fell in love with the medium.
"I went there and I tried it out, made a marble. I showed up every day after that," Donlon said. "I was immediately fixed on glass. I was just so enamored with the material from the torches, the tools, the fire."
He went on to run an art studio in Richmond, Virginia, where he took on scientific and glass repair jobs. He also taught flameworking at Virginia Commonwealth University. Donlon started at Cornell in June 2024.
His scientific work informs his artistic practice, and vice versa.
At his home studio, his most prolific art is a series of melty, blobby teapots. Each teapot has its own personality, and when put together they resemble a quirky community.
One of his pieces - 52 square-ish, mirrored teapots nested together in a cube - is in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' collection.
While the teapots look free-form, the margin of error while making them can be narrower than the pieces he works on in the scientific glass shop. To get a curve to reflect the light in just the right way or a spout to curve elegantly, he has to work even more precisely.
"Cube," a piece Donlon made in 2023, is in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' collection.
"Getting those drips and the flow of the glass to look like it's melting takes so much more work than just heating it up and hanging it down," he said. "You have to add glass and create a tiny tube and pull it just the right amount. It doesn't just flow in that nature sometimes. It really has to be forced into that aesthetic."
However, learning how to be precise enabled him to understand when he can let go.
"I was trying to make everything perfect, but then when I got there it was boring," he said. "'Perfect' made an item that was completely dead. I needed to add some wrinkles and freckles and imperfections."
He has also created a life-size glass fishing rod, complete with a glass reel with moving parts. It looks like it's ready for fishing line and bait. It took vision, engineering and a high degree of technical skill.
"Through my artistic practice, through working with designers and scientists," he said, "that versatility of working with so many different facets of people who have glass needs gave me the skills to go in both directions."
