Glass Blowing

Glass blowing is a glass forming technique by inflating molten glass with the aid of a blow tube. Glass blowing is a difficult technique, requiring a lot of patience, practice and skill. The two major methods of glass blowing are free-blowing and mold-blowing. The free-blowing technique is shown on this page.

I love glass. Multi color and useable in many ways; one being the usage as a glass garden partitioning.

Above a collection of glassware as exhibited in the Glass Museum which is located in Leerdam in the vacinity of the Glass Blowing Museum.

 

Leerdam - Zuid-Holland

The object is formed by blowing of short puffs of air into a molten portion of glass called a '"gather" which has been spooled at one end of the blowpipe and has been heated in a furnace until approximately 2066° F.

The air makes the object grow and with a wet newspaper, whilst constantly rolling the pipe on the glassblower's chair, the glass gets shaped in the desired form. With specialized scissors a nick is made in the glass. Exactly at this nick the shape will break off the blowe pipe.