Hot Shop in Tacoma – Post 20 of our August Seattle trip

The week after we went to the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, we went to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. Of the two, we preferred the Tacoma Museum of Glass because it was larger, contained a hot shop, and was generally more interesting. It contained some exhibits by Dale Chihuly, but it showcased other glass artists as well. However, if you’re specifically interesting in Chihuly’s work, the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle did a better job with his exhibits.

We started with the hot shop where they make glass art. They have two primary methods of heating the glass; the torch, and the “glory hole”, which is a furnace. Here is a short movie of them heating glass with a torch.

They inflate the hot glass by blowing down the long handle of a blowpipe. It seems like it would take a lot of lung strength but they told us, no, you only blow softly or you will explode the glass. When they blow on the pipe, you can’t really see much happening – the glass just slowly gets a little larger.

In this next video they transferred their glass from one pipe to another one in order to turn the glass around. First they put a small blob of warm glass on the end of the new pipe (the orange blob). Then they stick the new pipe with the warm glass into the back end of the glass piece. Then they crack the glass off of the original pipe.

They break glass in a controlled manner by scoring it where they want it to break, and sometimes also dripping some water on it the break point, and then striking it sharply and quickly but without too much force. Sometimes the glass piece will shatter at this point, and they have to start all over again.

When the piece is done, they crack it off the pipe and put it into the annealer (a hot oven) to cool it slowly. 

It was a very interesting demonstration. One of the artists explained what was going on as we watched. They also had an overhead screen where they projected explanatory slides, or a close-up camera view of the action below.

There were elevated walkways along the sides and back where we could stand and look down.

The artist in the photo below was off to one side, shaping a piece of blown glass. We could stand nearly directly above him on the walkway and watch. He rolls the pipe back and forth on the two rails with his left hand, turning the glass, while holding the mold steady against the glass with his right hand.

In addition to molds, they also use stacks of wet newspaper and wooden paddles to shape the glass while it’s hot.

Here’s the audience watching.

The architecture is cool. This is the ceiling.

In addition to the hot shop, there was a museum gallery, a children’s design section (which was truly fun), and outdoor exhibits. I will post about those next!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.