Field Trip to Glassblowing Studio

I took my 8th grade Art class on a field trip to McFadden Art Glass yesterday to create blown glass fruit. They had such a great time experiencing glassblowing first hand, and really appreciated the challenging medium that they first learned about before creating their Chihuly-inspired chandelier recently.

After a short demo and some safety stuff, the kids dove right in to creating their own pieces! The first step involves gather some molten glass from the furnace onto a blowpipe, which is pretty much the only step the kids were not allowed to do. Here is a picture of Tim McFadden gathering for a student:

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Next, students cooled the pipe in this contraption which is sort of like a big water fountain and just makes the pipe more comfortable to hold and touch:

The next step is to choose the colors for the piece you're making and to press pieces of powdered glass frit into your molten glass:

Next, you reheat the glass in this furnace in order to get the frit to melt into the clear glass (you actually also need to reheat the glass this way a few times in the process of making the piece if it gets too cool to work with):

Now the glass is rolled on the surface of this metal table to help maintain it's shape and get it nice and even:

After getting a nice shape, Tim blew/trapped a small air bubble in the pipe in order to force it into the middle of the glass, which is the start of getting it ready to blow bigger. It's cool to watch the small bubble appear and expand the glass:

A few kids created pumpkins, and at this point, they blew a little air into the pipe while holding their piece in a metal mold with ribs around it, leaving the ribbed pattern on the outside of the glass:

The glass is heated again and it's time to shape it at the bench. At this point, a helper comes to sit at the end of the blow pipe and gently blows air in, while the student working on the piece uses various tools to shape and pinch the glass. The pipe has to remain constantly spinning to prevent the glass from dripping to the floor, so the person blowing is moving back and forth with the pipe- multitasking! 

 Once the piece is blown large enough and shaped the desired way, it is removed from the pipe and sits on this little metal cup. Tim gathers a tiny amount of glass on another rod and the stems/leaves of the fruits are added:

Once the stem is detached, a blow torch is used to soften the end that was snipped, so that it's not really sharp when it cools down. I think the kids like using the blow torch a little TOO much!

Once finished, the glass pieces are put in an annealing oven which is set to about 900 degrees and programmed to cool slooooooowly overnight. If the glass were to be left out in the air, it would cool too rapidly and shatter! So, I won't be able to pick up the pieces till next week most likely, but stay tuned for pics of the final products!!