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You are here:  Home  >  Helpful Information  >  Glass Blowing: The Art of Creating Glass Vases 

Glass Blowing: The Art of Creating Glass Vases


Mankind has been using glass to create objects since at least 2500 B.C.E., but it wasn't until the First Century B.C.E. that the history of glass blowing began. Before then, making glass vases or cups required wrapping hot glass around a core of clay or dung that could be dug out once the glass had cooled. This difficult process is called core formed, and such glass vases and bowls were owned solely by the very rich.

How Glass Vases Are Made
Glass blowing is literally what it sounds like -using blown air to shape glass. There are several ways of doing this, but the oldest glass blowing technique is still one of them. It's known as furnace or off-hand blowing.

Glass is made from a mix of heated materials, including sand, limestone, and potash. Glass blowing requires malleable, molten glass, so the glass furnace must be heated to over 2,000 F. A long pipe known as a blowpipe is then dipped into the molten glass and by stirring or rolling this pipe, glass is gathered around its end.

When the blowpipe is removed from the furnace, it is rolled on a marver to cool the glass's "skin." The glassblower then begins the vase making process by blowing into the blowpipe's end, creating a small bubble in the hot, liquid mass. To keep the glass workable, the blowpipe is dipped once more into the furnace, where more glass is added.

The glass blower continues to work the glass using metal or wooden molds or other objects that give the glass a definite shape. A long, pliers-like tool known as a jack is used to form what will eventually be the neck of the glass vase.

Then, looking a bit like Robin Hood or Little John wielding a quarterstaff, the glass blower spins the blowpipe around. The centrifugal force this creates elongates the glass. After further blowing, what was once a hot molten lump begins to resemble a finished vase. To keep the glass from cooling, each step in this process is followed by reheating in a small furnace opening known as a glory hole.

Vases must stand upright, so the next step in glassblowing is using a metal or wooden object to flatten the bottom of the glass. But the vase also needs an opening on top. To create this, a small amount of glass is added to the bottom so that a punty rod can hold the vase from the bottom. The neck is cracked off the blowpipe with the aid of water, and then reheated so it can be opened up and smoothed out with the jacks or other tools.

Finally, when the desired look is achieved, the glass vase is carefully removed from the punty and put into a temperature-controlled oven known as an annealer, where the vase cools and stresses in the glass are eliminated over a period of 12 to 48 hours.