Professional glassblower? Not quite...

Our first outing was to a local place called Blenko, you may have heard of it, located in Milton, WV.  This was the first experience we had with the art of glass blowing. 

*** I want to clarify that I, by no means, took the lead in creating any of the items that were produced.  Later in this blog you will witness my attempt on our summer trip, in making a Christmas ornament.  Glass blowing is a very under appreciated trade that takes much skill and a lot of practice.***

We made a candy dish and two water bottles.  The candy dish process was free handed, while the water bottles were made using a mold we blew the glass into.

CANDY DISH





Frit

This is the Frit I chose to use for my candy dish. Frit is what gives the glass color, simply its granular colored glass. This is used to add multiple colors to glass.  The clear molten glass is rolled in this Frit and then brought to the fire again to make it uniform in temperature. 



White and Multi-colored Frit for my candy dish

Next we brought the molten glass over to the blower, who blew into the glass to create the hollow part of the bowl.  And then it was fanned out and allowed to rest on a steel star like contraption to create the wavy edge.

Shaping the candy dish hollow bowl, also illustratingthe temperature of the molten glass, Blenko from Rebekka Atkins on Vimeo.





WATER BOTTLE
The water bottle had less room for error, because we were using a mold for the shape.  No frit was involved in this process the glass was colored in large batches because they were making many of these.  Therefore we only had select colors to choose from.

They brought the molten glass over to the station and we used a wooden tool to shape the glass into a uniform ball. The ball was placed into a wooden mold and I blew making the glass take the shape of the mold and creating the hollow vessel.   The last step was taking a steel Dow rod type tool to make the two spouts on the neck of the bottle.




INSERT PICTURE OF COMPLETED PIECES HERE