When was glass blowing started

The final step is to remove the glass from the glass pipe. To do this, steel tweezers called jacks are used to separate the bottom part of the blown glass while rotating the blowpipe. Thanks to the separation with the jacks, the glass can be removed from the blowpipe with one solid tap.

The last step is to take the blown glass to an annealing oven using heat resistant gloves. This allows the glass to cool slowly over several hours, as it is highly perceptive to breaking when exposed to rapid temperature changes.

Louffer 1, Bank of America, N. All Rights Reserved. Website by Outspoke. Hit enter to search or ESC to close. A full range of glassblowing techniques was developed within decades of its invention. Before the invention of the metal blowpipes, the ancient glassworkers made clay blowpipes, also known as mouth blowers, due to the accessibility and availability of the resources. Two major methods of glassblowing are free-blowing and mold-blowing. Free-blowing technique held very important position in glassforming ever since its introduction in the middle of the 1st century BC until the late 19th century and is still widely use nowadays.

The Portland Vase which is a cameo manufactured during the Roman period is an outstanding example of this method. Mold-blowing was an alternate glassblowing technique that came after the invention of the free-blowing. This tools and techniques have changed very little over the centuries.

The glassblowing craft was passed from father to son or from master to apprentice. They remain there today. The merchants of Venice, with their small ships plying the trade routes both East and West were quick to realize that the glass made in the glass houses of Murano has a ready market.

Here was a product of great value — it could even be traded for GOLD! The wealth it returned to the merchants of Venice was a prime factor of the growth of Venice as a major trade center.

The merchants realized that by doing so, they were trying to avoid competition and maintain their monopoly. It went to Germany, France and areas in mid-Europe, where the sands and forests stood ready to embrace this new technology. Alas, the very act of trying to maintain a monopoly had created an atmosphere whereby it was inevitable that it would be lost. The fires of Venice were producing glass on an ever expanded scale and the merchants became richer and their trade routes became larger.

Their successes, however, were doomed. The Venetians were unable to prevent the movement of the glass workers and their techniques. Soon the glass houses of Murano succumbed to the competition of the French, the German and others, who by now duplicated and even improved the capabilities of the Venetians. Shortly, the quest for the secrets of the trade reversed and Venice found itself searching out the workers who by now had advanced a step ahead of them.

For instance, in the production of glasses for the great Cathedrals of France, French glass workers had produced a new array of colors in their glasses. The demand for windows made from the French glasses overcame their ability to produce them. Reacting to a market that at the time demanded large quantities of flat glass for windows, a method was devised whereby a closed cylinder of glass was blown, the ends cut out, the cylinder split end for end and then sagged flat in an oven.

Here was an efficient method of producing glass in flat sheets! Having solved this problem, the European glass houses began creating a flood of flat glass. Imagine the delight of people of the time, after a millennium of covering the openings in their houses with oiled parchment, or cloth, to have access to a material which would not only let the light into their houses, but would also keep out the drafts and the rain!

The whole world was the glass workers oyster at this time! Both men and women too, for that matter, had an insatiable appetite for objects to adorn the body and home. The Italian flair placed emphasis on ornamentation as well as function and we see examples of a simple wine glass being graced with birds, animals, flowers and figures. They were masters of the use of color and shape and the world is indebted to the Venetians for their contributions to the art.

The political scene in Italy in the 17th Century saw the taxation on glass and corruption in government destroy the glass industry and it declined until it stopped, not to rise for years. Glass came to the New World also and the Founding Fathers were quick to realize that this new nation would be a giant market for the products of the glass houses. Workers were imported, bringing along with them the tools of their craft and glass houses were started in Jamestown shortly after the first settlers arrived in this virgin land.

Here was the extensive forests for fuel for the fires, the excellent sands, so all the requirements were in place to create a local industry. It would be independent and not subject to the vagaries of the European glass houses. Starting up, however, was not immediately successful.

As the forests disappeared and the production became more costly, the Jamestown glass houses shut down. The Dutch Company in New York even tried subsidizing the start of several glass houses. They too struggled to get started. New Jersey and Pennsylvania had excellent sands and extensive forests, so for many years the glass houses of New Jersey dominated in glass production.

To the north in Massachusetts, on the Island of Sandwich, there arose a group of glass houses and the glass produced there still bears its name. The new governments were offering incentives to the glass houses to the produce window glass for the new colonies and, before long, the glass houses were turning out flat panes of glass produced by spinning molten glass on the end of the pipe, and cutting it into small panes when cool.

The effect has even been duplicated in plastic sheets, but falls short of the charm of the hand-made spins. Each spun center is individual and the thickness of the glass and its variation gives color gradations which defines its individuality.

The glass workers of New England were also experimenting with overlaying a colored layer over the clear base, resulting in a cameo effect when designs were cut into the outer, colored layer. Designs cut into the outer layer were enhanced by the contrast between the two glasses. When he cut designs into the molds, the design was reproduced in the hot glass, giving a cut effect. Mottos and slogans cut into the molds also produced glass cups, dishes and vases with popular themes of the colonial days.

These, too, are eagerly sought after items by present day collectors. The glass shops released a veritable deluge of glass to this ready market. Imagine, if you will, the time it would take to hand craft all the glass insulators necessary to support even a single telegraph wire across this vast land.

With insulators placed on the wires every 50 feet, the number becomes astronomical. The machines to mold them were developed which enabled the advance of the telegraph lines to proceed as fast as the crews set the poles. America was no longer dependent on the European glass houses and this infant industry grew by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, in Europe, another quite different market developed for glass in the post Renaissance years. Medicine, Astronomy, and the sciences of Physics and Chemistry were leading Europe out of the Dark Ages into an age of light and knowledge.

Man had studied the skies at night through the ages and by this time had only partly understood the heavens above him. His natural curiosity drove him to delve into the mysteries of the Universe. He knew that a drop of water magnified whatever it rested upon and with the advent of glass into his culture, he soon found that here was a material, not unlike the drop of water, that allowed him to examine the material under it. It allowed him to see details he could not see with his naked eye!

As Man began to understand the magnifying power of the curved surfaces he produced on glass, he soon was making curves that produced more and more magnification.