Glassblowing!

Yesterday, as a present, Jenn took me to a glassblowing class at the Seattle Glassblowing Studio. I've always admired those pieces of art made of glass, so it was really cool to get to do one! We had a very nice (and patient) instructor who took us through the process: first, you take a hollow metal rod into a vat containing a whole lot of melted glass, and you take a chunk of glass from it, always rolling the rod so that the glass acquires a somewhat round shape. Then, you roll the soft blob of glass through some color pigment in order to give it a nice color, after which you put the round mass of glass in a separate furnace to keep the glass soft. You start blowing through the metal rod to expand the glass and from time to time you take the glass out of the furnace and shape it in a rounder form using some wooden instruments that are cooled with water (however, never apply water to the hot glass otherwise it will crack). The interesting part is that I wanted to make a bowl so after some time you warm just the top of the sphere and then you suck the air out of it, and the "top" of the glass ball collapses shaping it as a bowl. Once the shape is as perfect as you want it to be, you delicately apply some water at the base and then with some taps you break the bowl off the rod, finishing with a blowtorch to make sure that the bottom of the bowl is smooth. An interesting fact: if you let the still hot piece of glass simply cool down, it would crack, because it would cool down too fast. Instead, you put the new piece of glass in a special furnace that will slowly reduce the temperature for a couple of days, and only then you can see the finished product. This was a very fun and different way to spend a Saturday night, and I acquired a lot more respect for glass work artists. If you have the chance to do this class too, it is a really cool thing to do!