Special Photo Essay:

The Art of Creating Blown Glass

By Glass Artists Hugh Jenkins and Stephanie Ross
Photographs by Hugo de Vries

All pieces are started with a small amount of glass on the blowpipe. This first gather is the core on which the rest of the piece will be built. The piece will progress with the addition of layers of color and clear glass, building from the inside out.
The glory hole is the heat source used during the working of a piece of glass. The glass cools in the air and allows for only a few minutes of work at a time before needing to be reheated. There is no limit to the number of times a piece can be reheated.

A layer of intense color is heated and dropped on the pipe to give the body of the piece its color. These layers can be built up to give color differences on the inside and outside of the piece, or a background and foreground effect.

The color layer is marvered to cover all or part of the base gather. Marvering plates are usually made of steel, graphite, or brass. The name come from the French word for marble, the classical surface for working glass in Europe.

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