This year, I spent about a month of my summer on the East Coast to work with my professor at the marine labs over in Woods Hole. Given its proximity to Boston, I was able to spend a lot of time with my partner, including celebrating our one year anniversary together (♡ yay!). I posted here the scrapbook I made as a gift, but his gift to me was just as, if not even more special. For ages, I’ve wanted to give glassblowing a try. It’s one of those art forms that really capture my heart, and the technique involved is so unique. And it’s no surprise to those around me that I love it, heck, back a little before the pandemic, my dad and I binge-watched a glass blowing competition show, only further fueling my desire to attempt it. So as an anniversary present, Alex surprised me by taking us glassblowing. Talk about heart melting like sand in the glassblowing furnace!
My first experience glassblowing taught me a lot about the skills involved. First and foremost, I learned that it requires 100% of your concentration to do on your own. We had a teacher guiding us through and assisting, but even so it was easy to miss something. When working with glass, constant care must be given to its current physical state. While soft, it must be rotated continuously to keep from falling off, but this is also the only time you can make significant changes to its shape. It also cools pretty quickly, so you have to be mindful as not to break your piece off the stick if it is too hard. This is not to say the glass is fragile– we had to hit our pieces against metal and listen to the sound to tell if it was cool enough to add more molten glass to. More so, when trying to shape it in delicate spots, its consistency is crucial. There were a few times things hit the floor.
The other surprise was the heat. Sure, it makes sense that working in front of a furnace is hot. And me tell you, I enjoyed every sweaty moment of it! But the heat of the glass was more shocking. Even when in a hard physical state, our instructor told us it was probably still at least 500 degrees! Glass cannot cool out on the counter, and needs to be put in a special kiln to slowly and evenly bring the temperature down. At one point, a just-made piece was out too long, and it exploded from the uneven cooling. Alex offered to help sweep, but we were told it’d burn the broom still! The sound of glass popping in the glass waste bin throughout was quite fun.
In terms of safety, the general rule was don’t let it touch you. We were given safety glasses and these surprisingly heat resistant fingerless gloves (our instructor put a blowtorch to his arm with them on and was unscathed!), but I’m not sure what they’d do against molten glass. Or maybe it’s for if you accidentally hit your arm against the hot stick? Either way, I felt surprisingly safer than I thought I would. I’m sure it can be a dangerous art, but similar to ice climbing, it seems common sense and a good dose of caution is all you need. And maybe a good ventilation system haha.
It was also interesting to watch the instructor demonstrate different, more advanced techniques. Technically what we did would just be glassworking (or I think our instructor called it gaffing, but I’m not sure), since we didn’t put our mouth to it and add air into our work. The process of adding the air comes with a lot of time and practice, so I don’t think either of us would have been able to do it on a first try. But it was wildly fun to see the instructor try to make the biggest bubble he could! It was clear, even when the instructor was just goofing off to demonstrate, that he was doing so much at once to keep that bubble metaphorically afloat. It really gives me a lot of appreciation for just glass-blown Christmas ornaments, much less art from someone like Chihuly!
Above are photos of the things we made. As you can see, we are beginners. What you can’t see is that I don’t care, I love them! Personally, I can’t wait to one day have a fireplace one day to put the cat and pumpkin above to decorate during the spooky months. I also really hope that one day in the future I can be in a place where I could pursue this art as a hobby. Having a taste of this molten hot art form has left me wanting for more!
Happy reading,
-Beppa