Heat, timing and teamwork shape Makai Glass Maui’s molten art in Hāli‘imaile
Inside a Quonset hut in Hāliʻimaile, where Haʻikū rain taps the roof and North Shore trade winds push through a hot shop, lava-hot glass waits in a ceramic crucible. A glassblowing artist peers inside through dark sunglasses and uses a long metal pipe to gather a glowing orb – viscous, malleable and ready to be shaped by breath, hand and fire.
The pipe turns constantly, keeping the glass centered as it moves from furnace to workbench. Heat fills the room. One person steadies the pipe, another holds the furnace door, another blowtorches color rods together and another shapes the glass with tools.
The pace quickens as the piece gathers weight, color and layers. Wet newspaper meets the hot glass, sending sparks into the air as an artist shapes the surface by hand. Another maker lifts a paddle to shield the artist from the heat. Nearby, a second glowing form is prepared to join the first. The room is loud with fans, music and machinery, so the team relies on body language and practiced timing.
When the piece is ready, it is knocked from the pipe and caught by someone in protective gear. The team breaks into high fives before the glass begins its slow cooling in the kiln.
That coordination drives Makai Glass Maui, a glassblowing studio and fine art gallery. For founders Justin Brown and Randy Schaffer, glassblowing is part team sport, part choreography – every piece depends on timing, trust and artists who can handle the heat.
“If someone spoke a different language, it wouldn’t matter because we speak glass,” Schaffer said.
Above the heat, visitors can watch from the mezzanine for free. At the entrance, the gallery shows what all that motion becomes: whales, turtles, waves, pineapples and abstract sculptures lit on podiums or suspended from the ceiling.
Nearly 30 people make that possible. Some keep color ready. Others polish cooled glass, weld metal stands, mill wood bases, pack crates, ship finished pieces and walk visitors through the gallery, which also features paintings by local artists.
As the head artists, Brown and Schaffer’s partnership works because their strengths split cleanly. Brown is known for realism and sculptural sea life. He says he can’t draw, but he can visualize an object and build it in glass, often at a large scale. He trains in the gym to keep up with the weight of his sculptures, comparing them to a max lift. On the floor, he can stay with a piece for up to six hours.
Schaffer’s pieces lean abstract. He is known for intricate murrini, a technique that layers color, pattern and texture. He is the more public-facing half of the partnership, strong with clients and business development, while Brown often prefers the hot shop.
Brown and Schaffer met in 2009 at Da Factory, a glassblowing studio in Haʻikū. Schaffer, from Illinois, studied glassblowing in college and moved to Maui in 2006 after buying a six-acre property in ʻUlupalakua. He was drawn to natural ways of living and a place where he could make art.
Brown is from Seattle, one of the country’s major glassblowing hubs. He worked in studios and learned the art hands-on before moving to Maui in 2008. His reason was direct: “I wanted to move somewhere I could blow glass and surf.”
Da Factory closed, but Brown and Schaffer kept making glass together. At first, their operation ran out of a “beer keg glass studio” – a small, portable glassblowing setup built from a repurposed keg. It was enough to make small pieces, but far from the studio they hoped to build.
As demand grew at craft fairs, the artists began renting studio time on Oʻahu. They would fly in glassblowers from Seattle – some still make glass with them today – for weeklong production runs, making as many pieces as they could. Then they packed the finished pieces into crates and checked the crates onto a plane back to Maui, racing to baggage claim before the crates slid down the chute and hit the wall. The pieces would be sold over the next two months at the Westin craft fair. When inventory ran low, they did it again.
Eventually, they built a compact studio on Schaffer’s ʻUlupalakua property, expanding the beer-keg concept into a larger setup modeled after ancient glassblowing systems that relied on a single heat source. Residual heat from the furnace rose into a cooling kiln, where pieces could safely adjust to room temperature. It was resourceful, but tough – off grid, powered by a generator and reliant on propane hauled onto the property.
In 2011, Brown and Schaffer started leasing the current Makai Glass Maui building, a plantation-era Maui Land & Pineapple structure once used for pineapple distribution around the world. Part of the warehouse was a refrigerator when they moved in. They restored the space, built the furnaces and turned a once cold pineapple warehouse into a hot shop.
Outside the new hot shop, Hāliʻimaile was still quiet. The area had Hāliʻimaile General Store and Hāliʻimaile Distilling Company, which was not yet open to the public. Today, diners, distillery guests, pineapple-tour visitors and gallery browsers share the same Hāliʻimaile road.
“The hot shop faces the trade winds, which is perfect because glassblowing is a really hot thing to do,” Brown said. “We see rainbows every day. The elements are really inspiring.”
Inside the hot shop, three furnace stations allow three teams to work at once. Two larger 400-pound crucible furnaces, named Bert and Ernie for convenience, hold molten glass and run all day, all night, all year. About every year and a half, the team shuts them down to rebuild them.
Each night, raw glass goes into the crucibles in a sand-like form. By morning, it is molten. The clear glass comes from Sweden; color arrives from Germany in rods, chips and powders. Some pieces require days of setup and planning before hot-shop production begins. Once the team starts, the actual formation can happen within a few hours. The piece moves in and out of the reheating furnace every few minutes in a process called flashing, keeping the glass hot enough to shape. If it cools too fast, stress builds in the material and the piece can crack, break or explode off the pipe.
Artists trade off to handle the growing weight of glass and pipe, blow air into the pipe to form an air pocket and stay close to extreme heat.
“Everybody is surprised that we don’t wear gloves, but you really need the dexterity and fluidity of motion – the way you turn the piece is so important,” Schaffer said. “Just don’t grab the pole in front of the glassblower’s hand because they are most likely grabbing the hottest part they can handle.”
In the early days, Brown used to wear slippers in the hot shop until a hot piece broke off the pipe and landed on his foot. The injury damaged skin rather than bone, but he upgraded to shoes. Years later, it happened again, and a piece nearly cut off his toe. Now he wears steel-toed boots.
Coming off the pipe does not make a piece finished. Each piece is placed in a kiln and cooled slowly over several days. From there, it moves to the cold shop, where it is polished to museum quality. Then it goes to fabrication, where metalworkers build custom stands and woodworkers mill, sand and stain custom bases.
All of that happens in-house. Brown and Schaffer wanted the stands and bases to match the quality of the art. The bases often use wood from fallen trees brought to the studio, adding another layer of Maui to the finished product.
Light changed the business. Brown and Schaffer said illumination helped Makai Glass take off. Many sculptures are hollowed or designed to be lit from within. If a piece does not illuminate internally, it is designed around the way exterior light strikes it. That focus pushed Makai Glass beyond traditional sculpture into lighting, chandeliers and architectural installations.
The studio’s clientele ranges from visitors buying smaller gallery pieces to private collectors commissioning large installations. Brown remembers making a French bulldog, sculpting each wrinkle in the face. Schaffer points to projects for Mama’s Fish House, Boeing, Rolex, Vans Triple Crown of Surfing and the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour trophies brought national exposure on ESPN and became a turning point for the company.
For the future, Brown and Schaffer hope to create more large-scale installations for hotels and private homes. They have experimented with virtual reality tools that allow clients to preview a piece in their space before it is made.
Still, the center remains the hot shop – the furnace doors opening, the pipe turning and the team moving around the heat.
“It’s about having a pure energy and uplifting the room,” Schaffer said. “That feeling comes through in the art.”
Makai Glass Maui 903 Haliimaile Road, Makawao (808) 419-6685 makaiglass.com
A Turn at the Flame
Next door to Makai Glass Maui, visitors can step into the hot shop at Glass Experience Maui. Created by Brown and Schaffer, the studio offers glassblowing and flameworking experiences guided by instructors. Guests can create starfish, hearts, ornaments, drinking glasses, vases and sea life, then pick up the cooled piece or have it shipped home.
Brown and Schaffer designed the experience so visitors could try the tools and timing they watch from the Makai Glass mezzanine.
“I started at a place like GEM, and it changed my life,” Brown said. “I thought there was a need for it on Maui, and it’d make people happy.”
Open to ages 5 and up, GEM gives families, first-time visitors and groups – including corporate teams – an approachable way into the glassmaking process.
Glass Experience Maui 875 Haliimaile Road, Makawao (808) 573-7535 glassexperiencemaui.com
