Glass-blowing is a big deal around my neck of the woods.
Tacoma just to the north of us is home to the Glass Museum, one of the only
working glass-blowing museums on the West Coast. It began as a way to honor
Tacoma native, internationally renowned blown-glass artist Dale Chihuly. And
you can reach it from the Washington State History Museum via the Bridge of
Glass, a structure housing dozens of pieces of blown glass, with end posts
boasting huge blue-green pillows of the stuff.
Somehow, I doubt the glass-blowers of the Regency period had
such an illustrious and beautiful setting.
According to the Book
of English Trades from 1811, glass-makers only worked in the cold months.
The high heat of their furnaces would have been unbearable otherwise. These
furnaces were made of giant cones of brick, about two-stories tall, with
several openings. The ingredients—flint or sand, salt, and metal oxides—went in
one opening; fuel in the form of wood or coal in another. The metal oxides were
for color. Leave them out, and you had clear glass. Add a little lead, and you
had very clear glass (the famed English lead crystal was developed in that
way). Iron or copper oxide yielded green glass, cobalt oxide blue, and a sprinkle
of gold a beautiful red.
Once the ingredients fused together in a runny molten mass,
a glass-maker would scoop some out with a hollow tube about two and a half feet
long. The glass-maker rolled the mass on an iron plate to smooth it, then began
blowing into the tube to form a bubble. Blowing and turning both increased the
size of the bubble and shaped it. The result would generally be some form of
vessel—a bowl, a cup, a lamp cover. But the bubble could also be blown and
rotated quickly to form a large disk several feet across. Where the
glass-blower cut off the disk from the pipe left a little nipple. These plates
would be used to create the panes for windows like those below.
The art was not for the faint of heart. Burns were common, and
clothing or gloves might catch fire. But the beauty created is still amazing,
whether you live in Regency London, or modern-day Pierce County.
Pictures of glass from the Museum of Glass and Bridge of Glass by Kira
Picabo.
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