All That You Ever Need to Know About Hand-Made Glassblowing

The beauty that overflows
from every facet that shines
a happy beam
a stolen kiss at the rim
a rainbow burst just from confines
the world may
scream irrelevance
for me its
an act of reverence
to those hands that burnt
to mould it
to those lips that blew
life in molten sand
to those eyes that saw
the beauty to last a
thousand years.

- Subuhi Akhtar

Glass is one such majestic and magnanimous medium, though completely mouldable yet goes through a tricky and very temperamental process of melting and cooling. Composed of something as down to earth, literally, SAND – still finds itself in such high and mighty spaces in its presentation as numerous applications. From decorative to industrial, from tables to walls, from fanciest to the most practical purposes - this transparent, translucent material shapes over a technique that is widely known for its fascinating charm – GLASSBLOWING.

The technique of using your lung power to inflate and to mould molten glass to create beautiful hand-blown glass products like window pitchers, mugs, lampshades, etc. Originating from the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC, glassblowing has only ascended ever in the modern world. The world of Glassblowing revolves around few of the techniques namely,

Free Blowing:

With the onset of glassblowing, this technique has been pre-eminent and most prevalent. Free-blowing is an artistic technique to blow glass that involves the glassblower to blow into a molten portion of glass with short puffs of air. The end of the blowpipe has a spool for added convenience. This technique is about blowing air into the molten glass and making the desired shape out of it.

Mould Blowing:

Following the boom that free-blowing technique witnessed in the Roman culture during first part of the second the quarter of 1st century AD., mould blowing is more intricate and detailed in nature. In this technique, the glassblower places a blob of molten glass at the end of a blowpipe and blows into a metal or wooden carved mould. This technique is suitable when a pattern or design has to be imprinted on the glass.

Glassblowing is surely a daunting task that involves a series of steps to blow a glass perfectly with utmost precision. Mentioned below is the glass blowing process jotted down in three steps.
Playing with Silica, the primary component of glass is what you essentially need. However, silica sand isn't the only material that goes into glassblowing; a lot of fluxes are used to enhance the viscosity of the glass. Though these fluxes would majorly produce clear glass, you can always add some metals like cobalt, or chromium to add a dash of colour to the hand-blown glass.

The next step in the process is Blowing the Glass: Once you're ready with the glass mixture, you'd need a blowpipe and crucible (a pot at a temperature of around 2000 degrees Fahrenheit to melt the glass). The blowpipe is dipped into a furnace containing the pot and would come out with a blob of molten glass, which then gets subjected to careful blowing. Multiple tools are used to shape, mould and manipulate the glass in the pursuit of the making.

The Next step, primarily, happens to be the most important - Cooling down: This step is the most important in the glass blowing process. A furnace called the annealer is used to crystallize the soft glass mixture after it’s been shaped. In order to evade the chances of giving a thermal shock to the glass, careful monitoring has to be done by using a pyrometer that regulates the temperature during the annealing process. Furthermore, the glass is taken to a cold shop for the final enamelling, engraving, or polishing.

If you've stuck around till here, it must be apparent that glassblowing isn't a child's play. Yes, numerous precautions have to be taken in order to avoid harms and one has to be very careful. Glassblowing is as much art as one might think and it's as much hard work as one can't imagine.