Through the Looking Glass (Looking Through the Glass?)

One the coolest things to do at the Corning Glass Museum is to get up close and personal with the stuff. After our recent trip, we've determined that no journey to Corning is complete without a visit to the Stuido that the Museum runs. For a small fee, you can participate in a wide variety of glass crafts.

On Thursday, we signed up to make a flower and some globes out of molten glass. It is really incredible to work with a substance that is pushing the 4000 degree temperature mark. Once you form the molten glass into the shape that you desire, the stuff is cooled at 900 degrees. The Corning Museum Studio must be a nice place to work in the throes of a dark, icy, Western NY February.

The kids each worked on globes. This involved collecting a mass of molten glass on the end of what amounted to really long, steel straws. The kids didn't do this - remember - 4 thousand degrees. The studio assistants took care of collecting the glass and dipping it in what I can only describe as "glass jimmies" - little fragments of colored glass pellets, added to brighten up the proceedings.

What the kids did get to do is one of the coolest things in the world: they got to blow the glass. It is a one of a kind feeling to take something in a raw, yet fantastically dangerous, state and essentially blow bubbles into it to create beautiful, solid works of art.

I had a slightly different experience in making a flower. Initially, Lisa was going to do this, but she insisted that I try it out. I told her I would only give it a shot if I could give her the final product, so the matter was settled. Lisa agreed to man (wo-man?) the camera.

To make a glass flower, you begin in much the same way you do to create a globe, but instead of blowing the glass, you pull it and squash it and mold it; with awesome steel tools. This was definitely my kind of art.

After we finished our projects, the studio assistants placed them in the cooling oven. If glass cools down too quickly, it places too much stress on the material and causes what I thought were actually pretty interesting looking spiderweb-like marks to creep through the piece. We had to wait 24 hours to see the final results of our efforts, so you're going to have to wait too I'm afraid. I'll post pictures of the final products tomorrow!