Glassblowing Field Trip

My 8th grade class took a field trip yesterday to McFadden Art Glass in Baltimore where we had an amazing time making blown glass ornaments! The kids were involved in every step of the creation process and they had a terrific experience... We will be able to pick up the cooled pieces later (check back for pictures!), but here are some pics of the process- enjoy!

Students watching the demo of the project

First, Tim (the owner of the studio) or Barb (an assistant), collected molten glass on the blow pipe from a giant furnace:

Students gently rolled the glass onto colored glass frit of their choice (the pipe has to be turning the entire time so the glass doesn't plop off the end like dripping honey!):

 The glass is heated again so that the color can melt into the glass...:

and then Tim, the owner of the studio helped blow the first bit of air into the piece, before we rolled against this metal table to get it to a nice even shape: 

Students then worked at the bench with Tim to shape the piece further using big tweezers to pinch the top:

Meanwhile, a friend is helping out at the end of the pipe by blowing air into it to make the piece larger  and hollow (not as easy as it looks- you have to blow pretty hard and move from side to side while blowing since the pipe is constantly twirling):

At the same time, a new bit of glass was been gathered on the end of a solid pipe. Once the hollow piece is detatched from the pipe, this extra bit of gathered glass was stuck to the hole on the ornament to create the hanger:

The pieces were then put it in an annealing oven overnight so they can slowly cool (cooling too fast = shattering glass!). I will be picking up the pieces soon- check back for photos of the finished products!

Meanwhile, check out these photos of pieces in Tim McFadden's gallery- the kids loved it!

This is the sink in the bathroom... how COOL is that?!