About David Goldstein

Dave Goldstein is one of the most prolific designers in the history of glass smoking accessories. Some of the innovations he was responsible for include:

• First “ash catcher” (1976)
• First “percolator” double-chamber tube (1979)
• First tube with trailed colored decoration (1981)
• Colored “claw” hand pipe (1981)
• First fully worked colored tube with ground (by hand) joints (1987)
• First use of Hexagon base on tube (1994)
• First adaptation of a gas washing bottle as a smoking accessory, the Rooster Apparatus™ (2011)

Dave finally looked up from his torch and noticed that smoking accessories stopped being colorful and started looking like laboratory apparatus in 2010 but there was nothing that functioned like laboratory grade glass. In 2011 Rooster Apparatus™ was born, as a company and the piece with “the most fizz in the biz” quickly came onto the national scene.

Dave’s vast experience with laboratory glass, and the people who use it, came from working in the University of Maryland’s technical glass shop in 1980-81. He knew that when the chemist’s object is to scrub a gas with a liquid the apparatus of choice is a gas washing bottle with a fritted disc; you will never find a legitimate chemistry lab using such inefficient designs as octopus/palm-tree percs or inline bubblers to scrub gas with a liquid.

Knowing this, Dave set out to make a fritted disc coarse enough to function at lung pressure, as they are not commercially available. In doing so he discovered that adapting laboratory apparatus to function as a water tube worked much better than trying to make a water tube look like laboratory apparatus. The result is the first smoking accessory intended and qualified for laboratory use…the Rooster Apparatus™ (registered trademark, patent pending).

The first prototype of the apparatus was finished late April, 2011. The patent application was filed December, 2011. Since then many companies and individual artists have attempted to make a frit disc that functions as well as Dave’s (we call them “knock off’s” or “froosters” around the shop) and failed spectacularly. Dave loves to quote Stewart Brand:

“They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Innovation is the most sincere form of criticism.”