I used to live close to a glass blowing museum where they organize glass blowing workshops on Mondays when the museum is closed. It was always something that I wanted to do some day, but the costs were quite high. So when my job gave us the option of doing workshops from a fund, I decided to sign up for glass blowing. The waiting list was more than a year, so when they phoned me a few weeks ago and said ‘we have an opening next Monday’, and it happened to be during my holiday, I jumped on it.
The workshop had four people per instructor and we got some options of things to make. The first thing everyone had to do was to make a clear glass paperweight. You’re supposed to pull the glass out with tongs and of course my upper body strength was lacking so mine has smaller bubbles than intended. With a solid object like this, no blowing is needed.
The second thing we made made was another paper weight. Now we had options though. 1) We could choose two colours to add to this one and I chose shades of blue. 2) We could choose the shape. We got some options to pick from; a sphere again, a sphere that could hold a tea light or a ‘rock’ shape with flattened sides. I chose the rock shape, it turned out really cool! I like this one the best.
The third thing was a vase. With this one, we could again pick our colours and our shapes. I chose to add only one colour (white) and wanted to make a similar shape to the rock I made before. So the sides were flattened again. The neck of this one turned out very narrow with very thick glass, so it can’t hold much, but it does look interesting.
I enjoyed the course a lot. It’s so much harder than it looks when professionals are doing it. The combination of ‘super hot’ and having to continue turning the pipe and not having an ‘eye’ for it is a lot. I’m still inclined to do another course in the future though.
