Galerie Glasswork - Hand Blown Glass

The "Offhand/Freeblown" Technique.

          Offhand/freeblown glass is the term that denotes that the process lacks the use of any mechanical device, that the pieces are strictly made by hand, one at a time using a small variety of hand tools such as blowpipes, pontils (punties), hand-held wooden blocks, jacks, sheers and tweezers.

          With that in mind, my pieces are made by gathering molten glass at about 2100* F onto a blowpipe, blocking that gather with a hand-held block (or sometimes wet newspaper) to gain some shape and symetry. Next, mouthblown air is introduced into the blowpipe, trapped there, and as it is warmed from the heat of the glass, it expands to form a bubble within the gather. Sometimes the first gather is of clear glass, sometimes it is of colored glass depending on the desired results. From this point a great many things can and usually do happen: more clear or colored glass, more blocking, hand tooling, blowing, reheating, shaping, and then transferring the piece from the blowpipe to a pontil so that the open end can be worked, requiring more reheating, shaping, etc. Once hot working the piece is finished, it is separated from the pontil and placed in an annealing oven to cool very slowly. For most of my work, the cooling involves no less than 16 hours for the small thin pieces and a great deal more for the larger thicker ones. Once the pieces are cooled I can finish them by grinding and polishing the bottoms before signing them. All the above is very basic to my work and there are limitless variations that apply to each piece thus making each one-of-a-kind, unique with its own characteristics.

          I choose to do all my work alone, without any assistants, as I find it difficult for someone else to know exactly what I want or need, exactly when I want or need it. Sometimes I'm not really sure myself! That is how I blow glass.