Glass Blowing
Emily Livingstone
I recently went to a museum entirely focused on the makings of glass and different glass art pieces. It was incredible what people made with glass and how the process was completed. As I watched the professionals mold the glass, I was in awe at what they were dealing with. Glass makers have come such a far way from what they started with.The way I see anything made of glass is from a completely different perspective now that I know how it’s made. When I see a wine glass, for example, I never used to stop and think how much time, effort, and money went into making such a simple object.
The history of glass blowing dates back to approximately 3500 years ago, as a art brought to us from the Romans. The art of glass blowing built up from different techniques of making glass pieces. It started out with a mold made out of clay. Roman glass makers would shape the mold to what they wanted to make. The objects that were made out of glass were called vessels. Although at the time, glass making was not very popular in a variety of places, there were a lot of glass fusing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In these areas, the glass was very hard and expensive to make, so only members of the higher classes could own such a beautiful item. Trade started to expand the knowledge of glass making throughout the world.
Finally, the process of glass blowing was invented when someone discovered that you were able to blow into the glass to make the shape of the vessel you wanted in 50 BC. Because of this fascinating new discovery, glass blowers had a much wider range on what they had the ability to make with glass. Glass vessels became more of a household object, and because glass blowers could just blow into the glass, making these vessels became easier to do, and easier to handle financially. In effect to glass becoming easier to make, there were more glass pieces to give out, which meant more of the lower class members could have glass vessels as well as the upper class.
The population and demand of glass vessels quickly increased when the industrial revolution started. people made factories, so that the glass blowing again became easier for people to make. Still, the process took a lot of work. Otto Schott, a german scientist, and Ernst Abbe studied the chemical makings of glass, and contributed immensely on the mass production of glass blowing from their research. Soon people started inventing new things to help the process of glass blowing, such as the tank furnace which was invented by Friedrich Siemens. This made Friedrich Siemens very famous, replaced the old pot furnace, and helped keep the glass at a high enough temperature that it stayed as molten. Then there was the invention of kerosene lamps, and suddenly the demand on glass lamps went up instantaneously.
Until the Glass lamps were made, glass was pretty much only used to make things such as different shaped vessels and bottles. Glass started being used for so much more, that glass started to be part of everyone's daily routine. Once there was more population of coal, people had the fuel in order to maintain glass factories in more areas around the cities. Soon after, there was the invention of the glass bottle blowing machine which was made by Michael Owens. After he invented this, there were many other machines inspired by it. All these machines made glass blowing more and more easier and helped make the process cheaper.
There is more to it than just the history, like the actual step by step making of all the different things made out of glass. When I take one good look at something made out of glass, I couldn't see how something of such simplicity, could be made.
After studying about the history and process at glass blowing I was all the more amazed at what glass blowers had the skill to do.
SOURCES:
