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Faking glass and green dolphins
Feb. 18th, 2011 08:50 amI first saw glassblowers in Venice.
In my memories, it's also the first time I saw magic.
The men put sticks into hot fire, drawing out something that was red and gleaming and – it seemed – liquid fire. And then, from that, they would start to pull at the fire, twisting, pulling. Other colors would emerge and then – this was the magic – a little horse would come out. Or a flower. Or a shoe. Or a vase. Once the glassblowers snipped off little pieces of purple glass, all glittering, and gave one piece to my brother and another piece to me. I still have mine. And I still have the horse I was allowed to get – green, since green was my favorite color that day (it changes, but is never orange). Only one horse, not more, because my parents were afraid that I would break the others, a prophecy that alas proved all too true: that horse is in my room right now, in the shelves across from me, with one foot missing, to remind me of magic. And breaking things.
It's not really a surprise, I guess, that I fell in love with glass blowing and glass art and can spend hours sitting in front of glassworkers and that even hours spent in front of stained glass cathedral windows listening to extraordinarily dull and frequently factually incorrect lectures on tympanums couldn't quite destroy this love (although it made me considerably less fond of Romanesque architecture, but that's another saga.) I want to do that, I found myself thinking.
I remembered, too, the little "stained glass" kits I had when I was a kid – when you had a metal frame, and you dropped little colored balls in it, and put it into the oven, and, yay! Stained glass. Of a sort. That had been fun and worth doing again, even if not precisely a high level of creativity.
So, when our town catalog flopped into our mailbox, coincidentally while I was trying to think of ways to get myself out of the house and doing something new and meeting more people, offering a glass art class, I had to sign up. I didn't quite tingle with excitement, but my mind thought of all of the happy things I could do with glass. The term, I realized, was rather vague. Would we be making stained glass? Glass jewelry? Glass art pieces? Or – realizing how unlikely this was for an introductory glass art glass in a community center in a small city that has not exactly shed a small town feel – would we actually be doing glass blowing?
As always, reality rather rudely intruded into these lovely ideas. Along, of course, with hurricanes. Potential ones, that is.
( Cut for fakery, adhesive, length and green dolphins. Sorry about the dolphin part. )
In my memories, it's also the first time I saw magic.
The men put sticks into hot fire, drawing out something that was red and gleaming and – it seemed – liquid fire. And then, from that, they would start to pull at the fire, twisting, pulling. Other colors would emerge and then – this was the magic – a little horse would come out. Or a flower. Or a shoe. Or a vase. Once the glassblowers snipped off little pieces of purple glass, all glittering, and gave one piece to my brother and another piece to me. I still have mine. And I still have the horse I was allowed to get – green, since green was my favorite color that day (it changes, but is never orange). Only one horse, not more, because my parents were afraid that I would break the others, a prophecy that alas proved all too true: that horse is in my room right now, in the shelves across from me, with one foot missing, to remind me of magic. And breaking things.
It's not really a surprise, I guess, that I fell in love with glass blowing and glass art and can spend hours sitting in front of glassworkers and that even hours spent in front of stained glass cathedral windows listening to extraordinarily dull and frequently factually incorrect lectures on tympanums couldn't quite destroy this love (although it made me considerably less fond of Romanesque architecture, but that's another saga.) I want to do that, I found myself thinking.
I remembered, too, the little "stained glass" kits I had when I was a kid – when you had a metal frame, and you dropped little colored balls in it, and put it into the oven, and, yay! Stained glass. Of a sort. That had been fun and worth doing again, even if not precisely a high level of creativity.
So, when our town catalog flopped into our mailbox, coincidentally while I was trying to think of ways to get myself out of the house and doing something new and meeting more people, offering a glass art class, I had to sign up. I didn't quite tingle with excitement, but my mind thought of all of the happy things I could do with glass. The term, I realized, was rather vague. Would we be making stained glass? Glass jewelry? Glass art pieces? Or – realizing how unlikely this was for an introductory glass art glass in a community center in a small city that has not exactly shed a small town feel – would we actually be doing glass blowing?
As always, reality rather rudely intruded into these lovely ideas. Along, of course, with hurricanes. Potential ones, that is.
( Cut for fakery, adhesive, length and green dolphins. Sorry about the dolphin part. )