The Bungee Jumping of the Art World (Glass Blowing), Day 1

To try something new and different, Bob and I signed up for a two-afternoon introduction to Glassblowing class held here in Seattle at Pratt. Neither of us have done anything like this before -- I think the closest I've ever came to hot glass before was when I had to pull TLC spotters from pasteur pipettes as an undergrad.

Anyways, we weren't really certain what to expect, but we did bring our required items (long sleeves, long pants, close-toed shoes and a water bottle) and set off to learn how to blow glass.

The class had six students, and everyone worked as partners. Our instructor gave us a tour of the facility (in addition to the hot glass studio, they have a warm glass studio, cold glass studio, a metal working shop and a place to cast bronze...across the street is the "2-D" section where they deal with "safer" things like paints and print making) and then we got started.

First, she showed us how to gather glass from the oven. Now, to have the glass be molten, the oven is ~3000 degrees (and I never asked if that was in Fahrenheit or Celsius...). In addition to the immense heat when you slide open the oven door, you can't actually SEE the molten glass...only the shadow of your metal pipe (which you use to gather the glass). Once you've gathered your glass, you need to keep the pipe level and most of all, keep the pipe rotating along the long axis. That way no glass falls off and your item doesn't become lopsided. Lots of things to remember! Thankfully there were no issues with anyone in the course getting hurt, burned or injured!!

We practiced gathering a couple of times, and then we started to learn how to use our tools to shape the glass (since it had really just been looking like a large, uncomfortable Q-tip up until now), and how to safely remove your glass from the pipe (we got to keep our "first" glass projects, too). Then we got to start on the "real" projects : paperweights.

The making of the paperweights was really cool, since once you got the color on your glass, you took your tools to twist the colored glass around before gathering again on top of it and shaping it into a paperweight. Bob made a light green paperweight, and I made a light pink one:


(the other two small blobs of glass are our first glass pieces -- mine is the taller one that i may have to turn into a snowman come winter). Stay tuned for Day 2 of glassblowing...