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About Glass

A Brief view into the History of Glass

Working with glass is one of the oldest traditions, with the earliest mentions dating back 5000 years ago. Since then glass has had multiple different hubs around the world. In Europe, the first mentions of glass started around the 1st century AD by the Romans - noting the still present-day famous glass making island Murano. Around the 10th century the art of glass working came to Germany. In the medieval times working with glass was already widely known in Europe and was used for making drinking glasses, vessels and even windows for churches. In the earlier times products were only reserved for high income society, but over the centuries glass products became more affordable for the common folks. Around the 16th-century Christmas ornaments were invented in a German town called Lauscha by Hans Greiner, which is how Lauscha became famous for producing Christmas baubles and ornaments.

How glass is made

The process of making glass starts with mixing sand (silica) with soda and potash. The mixture is heated up to high temperatures - in the case of the glass I'm using, the mixture is heated to 1200°C but with other mixtures the temperatures can rise up to 1700°C - in a specially designed furnace. The mixture has to boil and transform into a honey-like consistency which is the best state for shaping and forming it into glass products, like paper weights, drinking glasses, table tops, or glass rods for us lampworkers. Lampworking can be done with many types of glass, but the most commonly used are soda-lime and lead glass, both of which are called "soft glass".

How does glass get its color

A variety of different minerals can be added into the glass mixture to produce different colors. For example if you add cobalt into the mixture, the color of the glass will turn out blue. Even something as simple as too many iron particles in the sand itself can already have a significant impact on the color, turning the glass green. This is one of the reasons why Murano was such a famous glassmaking hub: the local sand had nearly no impurities which gave the glass a slight hint of blue but otherwise it was perfectly see-through.

How a glass rod is made

Lampworkers, bead makers, and even ocularists use glass rods as the raw material for their work and art. Everything begins with the glassblower taking a small amount of hot glass with a metal rod out of the furnace - or as we call it in Germany, a harbor. The glass mass is then shaped on a special table into a conical shape. This process is repeated until the glass has enough mass. Meanwhile another glassblower prepares a metal rod with glass, which is shaped like a plate. Both glassblowers then position themselves so that the two glass masses can be joined together. Slowly with the right timing, pulling strength and appropriate speed for the desired diameter, both glassblowers pull the glass longer and thinner by walking away from each other. The glass is held under a certain pull until it has fully cooled down to avoid the glass string from bending.When the glass has cooled down enough, the metal rods can be cut off at the ends of the strain of glass - at this stage the temperature inside the glass pieces is still over 400°C. Next, the leftover pieces of glass from the ends of the metal rods are then put into a big container filled with cold water - this is called stressing the glass. After which the rest of the glass pieces are removed from the ends of the metal rods.The broken pieces of glass can be mixed in with the next melt, or used in the form of granulate for decorating in and around other glass objects. After the glass strain has fully cooled down, the last step is sitting down and cutting the long strain of glass into more manageable pieces, checking the diameter and bundling them into batches. Glassworkers can buy these ready-made glass rods for their own work as raw material.


What is Lampworking?

Lampworking, also known as flameworking or torchworking, is a type of glasswork. A torch, or a lamp, is a tool which is operated with an oxygen-liquefied gas flame, which is used to melt the glass.Once in a molten state, the glass is given its desired shape with tools and hand movements. The piece can be decorated by melting different colored patterns of glass or, for example, even copper, silver or gold. This makes it possible to achieve an unlimited amount of different designs of glass pieces. When working with glass, the only limit is your imagination!Lampworking has its origin in the late medieval times through the combination of two inventions: the oil lamp and a foot operated bellow. Lampworking has many different fields with their own vastly different techniques, tools and individual studies.
Just to mention a couple examples:

  • Ocularist

  • Laboratory lampworker

  • Christmas ornaments lampworker

  • Neon sign maker

  • Art lampworker (that's me!)

What handmade means

Each of the GlassFlemming's art pieces are handcrafted by me, so every product is unique and may have some variations in color and size. Think about it this way: your handwriting or signature varies every day a tiny bit. It's the same with lampworking: the color may vary slightly based on how the glass is melted, cooled, and worked with.

Material Sources

I source my glass and materials from:

  • Farbglashütte Lauscha (Germany) – where I studied glassworking
  • Farbglashütte Reichenbach (Germany)
  • Murano (Italy)

Additional materials such as silver and leather come from small specialized suppliers.