Can't say attending one of these was exactly high up on my bucket list, but attend we did, when visiting the National Glass Centre in Sunderland, which is linked to Sunderland University. It is probably because of this latter fact that this place had free entry, and actually I wouldn't exactly recommend the exhibition going on in there at the moment. It was some really creepy stuff - clearly some form of modern art that I don't understand, and frankly I wouldn't want to understand why one of the painting depicted a table of food, with one of the trays containing Jesus with a 3D glass heart. Weird. Just weird.
However, part of this free visit allows you to attend a glass-blowing workshop, provided you arrive at the right time of the day (there are three demonstrations a day, all taking place at core hours between eleven and two(-ish). You go into this massive furnace room with a little demonstration area allowing the viewers to sit down as far away from the 1200 degree furnaces as possible. There was a man and a woman in charge of the demonstration (I was amazed at how young the girl was, and if it weren't for the fact that she looked SOO CONFIDENT, I would have been half worried that she was gonna burn herself - of course she didn't).
The man talked us through the demonstration, as the girl moved from furnace to furnace, removing additional amounts of molten glass from one furnace, rotating it to reheat it in another, and moulding it with some tools. Interestingly enough, the tools they use are very basic, and haven't advanced much from Roman times. The main instrument they used was a Newcastle newspaper, kept whole and soaked in water. They use it to handle the rotating glutinous glass, and form its shape as it rotates. Everytime she plonked it back down on the cast iron bench you could see it smoking, and of course all the retained water stopped it from catching fire. I think her hands must pretty heat resistant by now though - a piece of newspaper was the only thing between her bare flesh and an 800 degree piece of molten glass. Mental!!!
One of the more interesting points was when the speaker decided to demonstrate to us how rapidly the glass could cool down, and how very molten it is. He got some fresh molten glass out of the furnace and stopped rotating his pole, allowing the glass to begin to descend towards one of the cast iron tables. Imagine heaping a tablespoon of golden syrup and turning it over, and watching it trickle down. That's exactly what this looked like. The more impressive thing is that as the molten glass began to trickle down it began to cool very quickly and solidified into the fragile thing we know as glass. It happened so quickly, and the demonstrator was able to touch it and pronounce it room temperature within instants. The glass still attached to the pole was still hundreds of degrees though...
While this demonstration was ongoing, the female demonstrator was working on producing a beautiful vase. She used a combination of molten glass from the furnace and solid bits of coloured glass, and every minute or two she'd return to the furnace to ensure it didn't get too cool. With a combination of different moulding instruments, and occasionally giving a gentle blow down the iron rod holding the glass, she managed to shape the bottom end of a vase. The point of blowing down the rod is to send air into the glass, create some sort of air bubble, and cause the glass to gently balloon outwards and gain its shape.
She then had to transfer the glass over to another rod so that she could shape the end that had previously been attached to the first rod (confusing, huh?). This was done in what looked like a really difficult way, because she had to use these tweezer things to make the end more fragile, and then the guy came in with the other rod with a bit of molten glass as glue, and he attached it and they spent some time rotating two massive rods until she could snip one off. Lol. Looked like a disaster waiting to happen!!
Somehow they managed not to drop it on the floor, kept rotating it and finally moulded it into something that actually looked like a vase. They said that it was possible from there on to mould it into basically anything - a plate, a wine glass, whatever!! Guess they weren't feeling adventurous that day.
The only downside to this workshop was that when they were done about half an hour later, they still couldn't show us the completed vase. This is because you can't allow the finished product to cool down naturally to room temperature, as it will form cracks and eventually break (or just look really crappy). So they place it in another oven until the end of the day, and then they place it in a cooling oven (huh?? counter-intuitive right??) which brings it very slowly down to a temperature where you can actually handle the thing. And you won't be able to see the vase's true colours until it cools down completely - when hot the colours all look this weird muddy brown. They did assure us that the vase would be put on display when ready, and apparently it's possible to buy these display items for some very reasonable prices. What a great place!!
To top off a very interesting morning, we stopped for lunch at the centre's restaurant. This place was absolutely booming, and we soon found out why.....the food was amaze balls!! Boyfriend and I ordered a sharing platter (total bargain at £8), which included an array of parma ham, chorizo, salami, fresh flavoured bread, a lovely quiche, a bowl of olives and sundried tomatoes, and an impressive array of flavoured oils. I was so impressed (and so full!!!)!! So chaps, if you're every in the area, I recommend checking out the National Glass Centre. It's totes worth a visit!!
One of the more interesting points was when the speaker decided to demonstrate to us how rapidly the glass could cool down, and how very molten it is. He got some fresh molten glass out of the furnace and stopped rotating his pole, allowing the glass to begin to descend towards one of the cast iron tables. Imagine heaping a tablespoon of golden syrup and turning it over, and watching it trickle down. That's exactly what this looked like. The more impressive thing is that as the molten glass began to trickle down it began to cool very quickly and solidified into the fragile thing we know as glass. It happened so quickly, and the demonstrator was able to touch it and pronounce it room temperature within instants. The glass still attached to the pole was still hundreds of degrees though...
While this demonstration was ongoing, the female demonstrator was working on producing a beautiful vase. She used a combination of molten glass from the furnace and solid bits of coloured glass, and every minute or two she'd return to the furnace to ensure it didn't get too cool. With a combination of different moulding instruments, and occasionally giving a gentle blow down the iron rod holding the glass, she managed to shape the bottom end of a vase. The point of blowing down the rod is to send air into the glass, create some sort of air bubble, and cause the glass to gently balloon outwards and gain its shape.
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| Some glass blowing instruments. Our lady demonstrator was a fan of the rod and tool rest, the tweezer and the torch body |
Somehow they managed not to drop it on the floor, kept rotating it and finally moulded it into something that actually looked like a vase. They said that it was possible from there on to mould it into basically anything - a plate, a wine glass, whatever!! Guess they weren't feeling adventurous that day.
The only downside to this workshop was that when they were done about half an hour later, they still couldn't show us the completed vase. This is because you can't allow the finished product to cool down naturally to room temperature, as it will form cracks and eventually break (or just look really crappy). So they place it in another oven until the end of the day, and then they place it in a cooling oven (huh?? counter-intuitive right??) which brings it very slowly down to a temperature where you can actually handle the thing. And you won't be able to see the vase's true colours until it cools down completely - when hot the colours all look this weird muddy brown. They did assure us that the vase would be put on display when ready, and apparently it's possible to buy these display items for some very reasonable prices. What a great place!!
To top off a very interesting morning, we stopped for lunch at the centre's restaurant. This place was absolutely booming, and we soon found out why.....the food was amaze balls!! Boyfriend and I ordered a sharing platter (total bargain at £8), which included an array of parma ham, chorizo, salami, fresh flavoured bread, a lovely quiche, a bowl of olives and sundried tomatoes, and an impressive array of flavoured oils. I was so impressed (and so full!!!)!! So chaps, if you're every in the area, I recommend checking out the National Glass Centre. It's totes worth a visit!!
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