How is the Paperweight Made?
Studio glass making is a slow process involving intense heat, heavy weights matched to delicate skills by the glass maker of timing and an eye for detail. The essence of the process is taking a gather from a furnace containing a crucible of molten glass on to a blowpipe or iron and manipulating it. The liquid glass is kept at about 1300C. Strictly speaking the glass maker should be called the glass blower. The use of air pushed down a hollow iron into a gather of glass creates hollows or voids in the vessel. Internal forming of objects is made by cutting and turning glass and adding colour and additional air or chemicals to produce the desired results. While working, the glass blower works on the glass using what is called the the glory hole another furnace that keeps the glass malleable. Finally, the glass maker needs an annealing oven to allow the piece of glass that is made to cool down slowly. From start to finish the process can take 24 hours. The pictures below show how the conce
