John Chiles was born in Groton Connecticut in 1962. John grew up in Hawaii, Guam, England, the U.S., and France as the family followed his father’s work for the U.S. Navy.

John first began working with glass in 1980 while a student at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. Classes at Bucks prepared him for an apprenticeship with a local glassblower. From there he got a job in a production studio where he worked for the next sixyears as a glassblower and studio manager. During this time John also began designing and building glass shop equipment.

Glassblowing requires cooperation and encourages collaboration.The glass community is relatively small and people for the most part are generous in their exchanges of knowledge and information. This exchange most often happens in workshops, collaborations, and seminars. Over the years John has attended many crafts schools, glass workshops, and seminars with master craftsmen and artists from the United States and Europe both as a student, teaching assistant, and teacher/lecturer.

In addition to developing his own art, John has worked on a contract and freelance basis for other glassblowers and manufacturers. He has worked in glass production teams on small and large scale projects that range from one of a kind art & architectural installations to the coordination and production of seasonal product lines
for a large manufacturer.

During his early years in glass shops John became skilled at glass shop equipment building and design. He has been designing and building furnaces, glory holes, annealing ovens and other glass shop equipment for over twenty years. Equipment he has designed and built is used by some of the United States’ most preeminent glass blowing studios such as Steuben Glassworks in Corning, NY. He maintains both a glass equipment business, with two partners, as well as a glass blowing studio where he designs and makes functional glassware and one of a kind pieces.

John lives and works in Weston, VT and sells his glass work in galleries across the United States.