Info: Glasblazerij Leerdam
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.
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.