“Those images of molten steel being poured with showers of sparks and ribbons of yellow liquid metal – it was stunning,” he recalls.
Since they were the next generation of Dofasco’s founding family, it was assumed Jamie and his brother Frank would join the firm when they grew up.
After all, grandfather was Frank A. Sherman who, with his brother Clifton, was a guiding force at Dofasco’s creation 78 years ago. Father is Frank H. Sherman, still the steelmaker’s honorary chairman.
Jamie’s brother Frank did enlist. Jamie didn’t.
Instead, the 41-year-old Jamie is now an established and respected artist, a glassblower with a studio just outside Bracebridge.
He splits his time creating contemporary glass designs and recreating glass artifacts that are part of Ontario’s heritage – including one with a direct link to a piece of Hamilton’s business history.
Jamie was 16 and still a student at Hillfield College when he realized his interest in music and the visual arts took precedence over steelmaking.
Finding an artistic temperament in a Sherman was not surprising. His father is an accomplished photographer while his aunt is an artist who once operated an art school in Sarasota, Fla.
Jamie started out as a professional folk musician, playing his acoustic guitar and banjo mainly in Toronto nightspots. But the life became gruelling, especially after he and his new wife Sharon moved to a turn-of –the-century log cabin in Apsley, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Peterborough.
“The nightlife aspect of music moved me towards my second interest, the visual arts,” he says. In particular he was interested in the traditional methods of glassblowing, developed centuries ago in Europe.
“I’m an impulsive type of person. I was an impulsive musician and there’s a rhythm to blowing glass that has links to music,” he says.
“It all happens at once. You have to stay with it until it’s done but you can change it by what you do along the way.”
And yes, he admits, perhaps on a subconscious level the process of glassblowing reminded him of those stunning visual images back at Dofasco.
Jamie enrolled in a glassmaking course at the Sheridan School of Design in Mississauga but was too impatient to complete it. “I stayed long enough to learn not to blow into the hot end of the pipe.”
There was much trial and error, but first at Apsley and later at his new home in Bracebridge, Jamie perfected his techniques and produced a body of work that led to exhibits at Hamilton’s Beckett Gallery and elsewhere.
He also came to the attention of the Royal Ontario Museum which commissioned him to make reproductions of one of its exhibits, a pitcher made in 1839 at the Mallorytown works on the St. Lawrence, believed to be Canada’s first glass factory.
Last year at the ROM, Jamie became intrigued with another exhibit, a glass paperweight with a distinct lily design. He asked if he could borrow it to make reproductions of that as well.
It was another link to his Hamilton roots. The paperweight had been manufactured at the Burlington Glass Works which operated from 1874 to 1897 at the corner of MacNab and Burlington streets. An historic plaque marks its location today.
The original paperweight was designed and made by George Gardiner who joined the glass works in 1885 as a 12-year-old boy. Jamie had difficulties trying to duplicate Gardiner’s technique. Luckily he remembered a book he’d borrowed previously on early Canadian glassmaking.
Lo and behold, in 1958 author Gerald Stevens had interviewed Gardiner – who carefully explained how the paperweight had come about. It was all in the book.
“It was an overwhelming experience to take this man’s works from paper and then take them into the studio to work on,” Jamie says.
“It was like having him come through time and giving a guiding hand at a critical moment.”
Another coincidence liked Jamie’s destiny with the paperweight. A fire swept through the Burlington Glass Works in 1885 – about the time Gardiner joined the firm. Jamie asked The Spectator to provide a copy of its coverage.
Sure enough, the fire was extensively reported on Dec. 14, along with a story on the burial of Louis Riel.
Also in the paper was an advertisement for Finch Brothers Clothiers at 18 King Street West (imported ladies skirts from $1 to $4.50). The store had been owned by Jamie’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side of the family.
“When I was a boy I used to visit that store. It was of the last stores in Hamilton that still used brass shuttles that took the money from the sales clerks in tubes.”
Jamie worked on his paperweight replicas in January and February of this year. They’re on sale at the ROM Reproductions Shop.
