Glassblowing

Glass blowing

The wild thing about blowing glass–as someone who has watched it done–but not done it (to be clear about that) is the way that, molten, it looks like taffy, but then, when cool is, well, glass. I've watched glassblowers working on the island of Murano adjacent to Venice, pulling horses that glowed orange the torchlight, grabbing the glass with tongs to pull it out, tease the leg of a horse from the body, make the ripples of the mane. And then there is this weird alchemical transformation, as it cools, where suddenly it goes brown, and then there appears a sort of sheen, the moment when it transitions from a near-liquid to solid. Glass blowing is elemental, somehow both primal and delicate. I suppose any art where you are working near the mouth of a giant furnace is elemental, and rich with symbolism. Hopefully soon we'll have a real glassblower here to talk about this. If that's you, let us know.