Creator Of A Glass Menagerie

James Houston hovers expectantly in front of the red, glowing furnace, known at the Steuben glassworks in Corning, N.Y., as a glory hole. He ignores the intense heat as he focuses on the master glassblower before him, who spins molten glass on the end of a pipe.

Slowly, a birdlike shape begins to form, and Houston, the emerging fowl's designer, alternately gasps and cajoles, giving instructions, observations and the odd word of encouragement. At central casting, Houston, with his jutting chin and erect carriage, would land the role of the Royal Scots commanding officer. Though reserved, he is far from stiff. At 69, he moves around the glass factory like a kid in a huge sandbox.

Leaning in close, as if smelling a roasting bird, Houston cannot contain his excitement. "Can you see it, Harry? See it now?"

Harry Phillips, the gaffer, or blower, raises an eyebrow in response, one hand spinning the glass, the other working a shaping paddle. "It's a dodo, right, Jim?"

The small gallery gathered around to observe the debut of the 82nd Steuben work by Houston chuckles, relieved that the tension has been broken. Houston shyly acknowledges the ribbing. He steps back as Phillips swings his pipe into the glory hole to reheat the sculpture. "There is a lot of pressure in creating a piece like this for the first time," says Houston, holding up a sketch of the spread-winged pheasant he hopes will eventually take flight off the blower's pipe. "It is like capturing any image you find in nature—a salmon jumping as it swims upstream, or a deer you see standing still in the middle of the forest. With glass, you only have a few seconds to capture that image, or it's lost."

Houston's work has long occupied a unique niche among the famous crystal art objects produced by the Corning factory. Since joining the Steuben team of designers in 1962, he has translated to glass such scenes from the outdoors as a trout rising to a fly, geese flying south in formation, dolphins diving into the sea, polar bears, bonefish, penguins, ice hunters, dancing cranes. His creations are not simply observations sketched on walks in the woods. Houston sculptures are equally about image and material: Bubbles rising in the glass of a bowl provide the turbulent water in which etched salmon swim; clear glass is the ice through which Eskimos hunt their dinner.

His sculptures are prized by collectors around the world who are apparently un-fazed by a price tag of $1,900 for a trout rising to an 18-karat-gold fly, or $5,000 for two dolphins with sterling silver tails leaping into solid crystal. Houston's popularity also extends to Steuben's not easily impressed craftspeople. For them, many of whom grew up hunting and fishing around the Finger Lakes region of New York State, Houston's designs and love of the outdoors make him a kindred spirit.

Yet as comfortable as he feels amid the furnaces in Corning, Houston is most at home in a pair of waders, casting for trout in streams near his 18th-century town house in Stonington, Conn., or for salmon in the Tlell, which runs past the study of his house in the Queen Charlotte islands off the coast of British Columbia. Wherever he is, Houston rises at 5 a.m. and takes a cup of tea to his studio, where he draws or writes (he is the author of 23 books, including the best-selling The White Dawn: An Eskimo Saga, a 1971 novel that he also adapted for the screen in 1973) until early afternoon, when it is time to take up the fly rod. It is an enduring passion he shares with his wife, Alice, to whom he pays the compliment "She not only casts a great fly, she makes the best salmon mousse I've ever had." Houston says his most creative moment is "just before five, when I'm half-dreaming the scenes I've observed in nature."

These twin passions for art and the outdoors were sparked early in Houston's Toronto childhood by his father, James, a traveling salesman who brought back North American Indian artifacts from his trips, and by his mother, Gladys, who encouraged his drawing talent. The sale of a drawing at age eight convinced young James that "this was going to be a great way to make a living." After serving in World War II and studying art in Paris, Houston found himself yearning for Canada's northern territories, and in 1947 he set out with sketchbooks, a can of peaches and a one-way ticket to the Arctic.

"I felt totally at home the minute I was there," he claims, though he admits that learning the Inuktitut language, mastering Arctic survival skills and eating raw seal meat did not come easily. He found that the Eskimos and he shared the same passion for art. "They had no inhibitions about taking the drawing pad out of my hands and trying it themselves. To them, art is something everyone does." Houston encouraged his new friends to sell their unique stone carvings in the cities. Within eight years, Houston's marketing skills enabled the local artists to create the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op, an enterprise that was making nearly $100,000 a year by the early '60s.