Around 1990 I went to the island of Niijima where they have a glass school. It is in Tokyo Bay, an overnight boat ride from Tokyo. While I was there, I was reminded of the Japanese fishing floats, which I used to collect on the beach when I was a kid, in Washington State on the Pacific Ocean. So not long after I was in Niijima, I started a series of round balls. The idea was to make them big, and to use a lot of color in different ways. We started making these Floats that eventually got up to 40 inches in diameter, which is by far the largest piece of glass that we make in terms of volume. It's just a huge piece of glass.