we went glassblowing today at blowing sands glass studio. david, the owner of the studio is this really cool guy who went to MIT, took a random class about glass his freshman year and just really loved it. he ended up majoring in materials science, took a bunch of glass courses, but graduated not really able to find a job he really loved that combined art, glass-making and engineering. so he decided to just open his own studio!
glass blowing is also really big in seattle because of dale chihuly and his famous glass sculptures, so we really wanted to try it out while we were here, being inspired and all by the chihuly glass museum we visited last week!
here’s what i learned in my mini glassblowing class as i tried to make a glass pumpkin.
excited to start!
first we gather the glass
the glass gathers on the rod and i spin it so it keeps its shape
roll it in the color that we want – mine is orange and the “sunset mix”
put it in the furnace to melt the pieces of colored glass on
blow it up…this was actually surprisingly similar to blowing a balloon. we actually did this multiple times and put it in the furnace in between to heat it up so that it could blow out more easily!
sculpt it
the body of the pumpkin – it looks purple right now because the glass is still so hot!
david attaches the stem of the pumpkin and makes the cool little squiggly part by wrapping the glass around a pole.
then he torches it to give it some varnish
yay!