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| Here I am gathering glass from the furnace onto a blowpipe. | Now I am at the gaffer's bench with the blowpipe, constantly rolling the blowpipe to keep the glass centered. |
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| I am using a wooden block to shape the glass. | I just blew into the blowpipe to form a bubble in the glass. |
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| I am coloring the glass slightly yellowish to mimic early crystalo glass by rolling the hot glass into crushed colored glass. | I am going back to the furnace to gather another layer of glass onto the blowpipe. |
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| I am shaping the now larger bubble of glass with a larger wooden block. | A side view of the bubble after it is shaped with the block. |
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| I continue shaping the bubble on the marver (metal table). I roll the glass against the marver to cool the parts I want to expand less. | Then I blow into the blowpipe to make the bubble expand. |
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| I marver the bubble some more. | Now I use the jacks to squeeze or "jack" a neckline into the bubble. |
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| I re-heat the glass. | I use gravity to stretch out the molten bubble of glass by swinging it around. |
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| I swing the bubble some more. | I use the diamond shears to grab the end of the bubble and pull it out so that it becomes even more cone-shaped. |
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| I constantly have to re-heat my piece so that it doesn't break. | My assistant brings me a "bit" of molten blue glass which I grab, touch onto my bubble, then cut off leaving a nice round dot of blue. |
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| A close-up of adding the blue dots. | This picture is pretty dark, but here my other assistant brings me a punty - a solid metal rod onto which we transfer the glass vessel. The glass is transfered so that the pointy end/ bottom of the vessel is attached to the punty so that I can open up the mouth of the vessel (that is the neck that I jacked down earlier). |
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| Here I am tapping the blowpipe to break off the lamp so that it will be entierly supported by the punty. | Now the lamp is on the punty, I heated up the mouth of the vessel, and am opening it up using my jacks. |
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| The mouth of the lamp is almost entierly open so the lamp is almost finished. As soon as it is compleet it is tapped off of the punty and put into an annealer where it will cool slowly overnight. |