The art of glass and it’s blowing.
A beautiful and noble art form is the skill of glass blowing. There are several ways to do it and it is an incredible skill to possess. Any manner of wonderful things can be made with the art of glass blowing. Its not even that hard it is essentially just blowing air in a molten bubble of glass that is then shaped. Its not the same as how you create a nice set of windows but if you are in need of a change then a specialist Windows Dublin based company will happily come and have a look that for you. The company is available to view at https://www.keanewindows.ie/windows-dublin/ and while they won’t blow you a window they can certainly look to fit you up with a decent set of them.
How though do you glass blow? The main thing to look to do is something like a nice fruit bowl or a decorative candelabra. The most popular design is for a vase. This allows you to make several new designs to be added to it. There are basically three different ways that you can blow glass. The first is the hardest but is also the most creative.
Free-Blowing. As it suggests this is an unfettered way of doing glass blowing. First of all, a lump of glass is heated up to a white-hot heat where it becomes molten. As soon as this happens a glass blow pipe is inserted into it. The blower does literally blow amounts of air from their mouth into the glass so that it slowly inflates. With the other free hand, the glass blower then starts to mould the glass into the required shape by trimming and scoring the molten metal. It really is I quite impressive that this is done purely be hand. There are bound to be some slight imperfections, but this is all part of the charm of the piece.
Mould blowing is more structured technique. As with a free blowing process again a globule of molten glass has a blowpipe insert into it. Rather than trimmed by hand the glass is poured into a readymade mould. The glass is blown so that it lends itself to the mould. Once it has taken shape the mould is removed, and the glass is trimmed and cleaned up so that any “flash” (where excessive glass leaks out) is removed.
Modern techniques are not as artistic but focus more on the emphasis of production. A three-furnace system is sued starting with the one to get the glass molten and malleable. The second is the glory hole so named because small piece of glass for embellishment are heated ready to be added. Once the piece is finished it is placed in the third furnace called the lehr. This cools down the piece of glass very slowly ensuring a greater strength. It can take hours or days so patience is a virtue.
The Pendragons. Uther and Arthur.