Don’t Try This at Home—Glass-Blowing as a Profession

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.

When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Turner

It is coming down the to the time of year when young ladies and gentlemen will be graduating and moving on to the next stages of their lives, be it more schooling or an apprenticeship or the military. A young gentleman I know has aspirations of being a chef; another wishes to be an architect. Nineteenth century lads could have aspired to those positions as well, but they had a few others we might be hard pressed to find today.

For example, he could long to be a button-maker. Buttons in the early nineteenth century were more often decoration than fasteners, but they grew in popularity and usefulness as the century wore on. Of particular interest were the stamped metal buttons, made primarily in Birmingham, according to one career guide for young gentlemen. Metal was cut to size in a foundry and then sent to the button-maker, who used a special machine to stamp a pattern into the button. He then soldered on the shank. And then women had the glorious task of polishing them. Regina Scott, button polisher. Hm, I think I’ll pass on that profession.

A young gentleman might also decide to be a glass blower, creating bottles or vases. A glass blower heated the right materials in a special furnace until they melted. Then he used a long thin hollow rod to draw out some of the material and blow into it. Blowing created an opening in the glass material; turning the material on a wooden stool shaped it to the correct size. A nineteenth-century career guide cautions that this profession can only be practiced in the cooler months because of the excessive heat. As I prefer to have enough income to eat all months of the year, this one probably wouldn’t be my cup of tea either.

But there was always the turner. A turner used a spinning lathe like the one here to create a variety of tools, decorations, and toys. Small lathes were spun by pumping a treadle. Larger lathes required two men to keep the wheel spinning while the turner worked. A journeyman in the profession could take home as much as a guinea and a half a week (around $125 today). If you had the dexterity to work on smaller projects, like toys, you could made a great deal more.

Regina Scott, toy turner to the king. I like the sound of that.