Hot Glass

Some days ago I went on a trip to Glashütte. This name means something like 'glass foundry' in English. It is an idyllic village not far from Berlin with a tradition in glassmaking. Now it mainly serves as a museum. It shows that the working and living conditions of glassmakers were far from easy or romantic in the days when every single mass produced glass item like a bottle was blown solely with the power of lungs under exploiting conditions. These days only two glassmakers still work there. They show their art of glassblowing to visitors. To see the working process is most fascinating! I'm so fond of it! They are very passionate about it and are full of love for their material. A glassmaker today is designer and worker in one person, which I think must be very satisfying.

He made the small bowl you can see in the picture below.
On the left side are jars with ingredients to colourise the glass, behind him is the furnace, and in the background is the kiln to anneal the finished items.

Blowing the pipe.

This guy is crazy. He touches molten glass with his (wet) fingers for a split second.

On the right side still on the iron is the drinking glass he just made.

My purchases. I like the bowl for its liquid look and
I had to buy some handmade millefiori beads of course.

There's no place like home

This was my home for 22 years.

Beads

Making beads is particularly exhausting for my wrists and fingers but I hope it strengthens them. I have some doubts though. Making beads is also a lot of fun! They need a lot of practice. I made bookmarks of my first sets and along with candlesticks I had made I gave them as gifts to some very nice people. The reactions I received were so positive, it still makes me glad.

My first face cane

I made my first bowls in May. Meanwhile I've done some more. It's still like magic. I can't get my eyes off them. I love the patterns so much.


I also made my first face cane. It's features and paleness are inspired by designs of Margaret MacDonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and so are the stylised rose canes I built.


If you look closely it looks like this one has a tear falling from the eye on the right. But that's just an air bubble that got trapped between glass and clay. Usually they show up in less appropriate places.

Cockerel and Ball

I ordered a big range of colours online and couldn't wait until they arrived and I found great pleasure in building flower canes and tried Skinner Blends. I even made some good ones without a pasta machine. Although it was an odd thought to me to run sheets of clay through a machine that is meant for food I bought this useful tool. I convinced myself that I'm really serious about my new hobby and that it wouldn't be wasted money.

My next project should be a surprise for a dear friend of mine. He didn't like my first attempt at all. Sadly he was the first one I showed it to. Imagine how I felt when my excitement met his dislike. He said he doesn't like flowers. But as I like him more than he does my work and as I wanted to challenge myself although I'm just a beginner I made him a glass showing the badge of his favourite and most beloved football club Tottenham Hotspur. It took hours to build a complex cane as this and I'm always slow already because of my hands, but it was fun. The hole thing got a bit distorted when I tried to reduce its size but I realised I rather leave it as big as it is than mess it up in the end. I have no proper tools to cut a big cane like this into neat slices, so slicing it was also a sensible part. The finished glass looks like this.

It looks rather Greek then English to me but it is flowerfree and fortunately very well liked by my friend and I'm very proud of it.