Glassblowing Studio Field Trip!

Yesterday, my eighth grade art class took a field trip to Corradetti Glass Studio in Clipper Mill and I think the kids really enjoyed it. When we first arrived, we watched artist/owner Anthony Corradetti demonstrate the glassblowing process to create a really cool vase. It was so interesting and he made it look so easy!Each student got the chance to work with the assistant, Emma, to create a glass flower of their own by pulling and twisting the molten glass. Here are the steps we followed to create our work...

Emma twirls a pipe in the molten glass (2100 degrees) to "gather" the glass, much like using a wooden stick to gather honey. Glass is gathered two or three times to create a flower:The glass is pressed into colored glass frit and reheated to melt the color- students got to choose the combination of colors they wanted. Next, students use a pair of giant tweezers to create a pattern on the "petals" of their flower (they are rotating the pipe at all times- harder than it looks!). The glass is reheated and students used the tweezers to pull the petals forward (some began to look more like sea creatures than flowers- very cool!). Using the tweezers, the whole piece is stretched out about a foot and twisted back to create the curled "stem." Here are all of the kids working on their own pieces:
The assistant detaches the flower from the pipe and the end is "fire polished" using a blow torch to smooth/round it out. Somehow the 8th graders convinced Anthony to let them use the torch, which I believe was a highlight of the trip!: The pieces are put into an annealing oven... Annealing is the very slow process of cooling the glass down from about 900 degrees to room temperature to prevent cracking and breaking. You may notice that the pieces are not very colorful. When the colored glass frit is hot, it looks brown, but it will be bright and beautiful when cool:
Here are the finished pieces on display in the middle school!