lampworking

In the late '70s, she revolutionized lampworking — a method that involves pulling, twisting and fusing heated glass — during a time when blown glass was getting all the attention.

Lampworking was seen as a lowbrow method for churning out glass tchotchkes, "boring and silly little things," in Ruffner's own words.

"Lampworking was trivialized as a street craft and dismissed as an art form," says Stankard.

The centuries-old process is lampworking, so named because the glass was once worked over an oil lamp.