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Hello! I’m Todd Hansen. We’re at the Art of Fire-Contemporary Glass Studio in Laytonsville, Maryland. Today, I’m going to show you how to blow a simple vessel from clear molten glass. A couple of things that we’ll need are a studio Hot Shop where we have got our furnace and equipment and some heavy tools. And I’ll take you through the basic steps from gathering glass on an iron to shaping and sizing the piece to get it to the proper dimensions and finally, we’ll learn how to transfer and finish the piece before we place it into the annealer.
Now the material that we’re using is a mixture of soda, silica and lime. These materials are melted at about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and kept in the furnace and for that reason, we take safety very seriously. In this process, we usually wear cotton clothing, shoes that cover our feet completely and we always wear a pair of safety glasses to keep the glass from popping and hitting us in the eye.
Now if you want to get started in this process, it’s best to find Hot Shop studio that has all the equipments, the furnace, the glory hole, the annealer, in that way you know you have got some good hands on instruction. You have got people who know what they’re doing and you’re working in a safe environment. Now I have been here at the Art of Fire for about 10 years now. I’ve learned my technique from working with different peers and my co-workers in the studio. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some industry people from the US and a few Italian masters. So you found your studio, you’re ready to get started on glass blowing, so lets first gather glass.
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