{"id":958416,"date":"2026-11-09T17:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T17:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/958416\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T17:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T17:30:17","slug":"im-an-artist-who-works-with-glass-heres-how-the-physics-and-chemistry-of-glassblowing-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/958416\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m an artist who works with glass \u2013 here\u2019s how the physics and chemistry of glassblowing work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glass as a material<\/a> is full of contradictions. Depending on the form and use, glass can be fragile or strong, opaque or transparent, rough or smooth. The studios my colleagues and I teach and learn in, as glass instructors, echo this abundance of physical opposites. These environments are simultaneously immersive, complex, seductive and demanding. <\/p>\n

When the studio is in action, you might hear glass breaking, hot metal being quenched in water, glassblowing pipes rolling on the workbench rails, and some good tunes on the stereo. You might smell hot beeswax and burning newspaper. You might feel a bit of waste glass under your shoe or the intense heat from the furnaces and a breeze from a well-placed fan. Glassblowers learn to listen, to feel and to find some focus within and among the kinetic. <\/p>\n

The constant stimuli of the glass studio may not seem anything like a sterile science lab, and yet glass artists need to accrue knowledge of physics and chemistry to achieve any kind of control with this dynamic material. They must choose a material with the desired properties and during the process judge factors such as heat and malleability.<\/p>\n

Glass as a material<\/p>\n

At Rochester Institute of Technology, where I help run the glass program, we primarily use two types of glasses. In our hot glass studio we melt \u201csoft\u201d glass<\/a>. This glass is specifically formulated to be melted in a furnace and used by the glassblower. It\u2019s a combination of fine mesh silica sand, soda ash and lime, with small amounts of a few additional ingredients that keep the glass beautiful when it\u2019s at its top temperature of 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,204 degrees Celsius). <\/p>\n

In our flameworking studio, we use a borosilicate glass<\/a>. You might recognize this glass as the brand Pyrex<\/a> made in Corning, New York. This is a super heat-resistant glass. It melts at a higher temperature than soft glass and arrives to our students in preformed rods that they can melt and shape by torch in our flameworking studio. The differences in chemistry really change how these glasses look and behave.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a><\/p>\n

Pyrex cookware is made out of a specially formulated, heat-resistant type of glass called borosilicate.
\n Picofluidicist\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n

Glass, from a material science perspective, is categorized as an amorphous solid<\/a>, meaning that glass\u2019s molecules are arranged in a near-random pattern and there is no sharp melting point<\/a>. Rather, glass gradually softens over a wide temperature range. <\/p>\n

Gathering glass<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve adjusted to the chaos of the studio, it\u2019s time to start working. <\/p>\n

We have two furnaces in our hot glass studio, where we work with soft glass, so anytime during the school year there is between 700 to 1,200 pounds of glass. It\u2019s kept in the furnace at its molten state (2,200 degrees F or 1,204 degrees C), ready to be gathered and transformed. <\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

Glass artists heat up their glass in a furnace so that it\u2019s molten and easy to mold.
\n AP Photo\/Keith Srakocic<\/a><\/p>\n

When we work with the material, transforming it with tools and breath and heat, it needs to be kept in a workable heat zone \u2013 probably between 1,100 and 2,000 F (593 and 1,094 C). When the glass dips below that range, we perceive it as solid, though at the molecular level it is still dynamic and acting more like a liquid.<\/p>\n

To make anything \u2013 a sculpture, a tumbler, a celestial magical orb or a pumpkin \u2013 you start by gathering glass out of the furnace on a metal rod. Once you\u2019ve gathered your glass, you start making decisions. <\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

An artist works in the Glass Hot Shop at RIT. When glass is in its molten state, the artist can shape it and blow into it.
\n Elizabeth Lamark\/RIT<\/p>\n

You might ask yourself: What tools do I need to begin to shape and transform this glass into the object I have in mind? If you wait too long and the glass begins cooling down, you\u2019ll need to reheat it to reintroduce malleability<\/a>, allowing you to continue working it without breaking it. <\/p>\n

A big part of glasswork is moving between the reheating chamber and the bench, where the artist uses tools to move and stretch<\/a> the molten glass into the desired shape. You\u2019ll need to alternate between these two stations many times.<\/p>\n

Glassblowing is a team activity. I have physical and intellectual support from my colleagues: breath from their lungs, protection from the heat, additional bits of glass brought from the furnace to add to my object. We almost never work alone. <\/p>\n

So, say I want to make a very basic clear tumbler. This is a simple conceptual object \u2013 utilitarian, domestic and intimate. It is also a tricky one to make well: too heavy and it feels bad in the hand, too thick at the lip and it dribbles when you drink, too thin at the bottom and it will break before it is complete. <\/p>\n

Maybe I want to design it so it is slightly conical: wider at the bottom than the top, so it\u2019s less likely to tip over. Maybe I want it to have a little indent for the user\u2019s thumb as a gentle invitation to her hand. First I make my design: I draw it. I share it with my team so they can predict the process and the object\u2019s needs. Then we begin. <\/p>\n

Working with physics<\/p>\n

I gather glass out of the furnace, let it cool a bit, then introduce a bubble in the glass by blowing into the pipe, the hollow rod that attaches to the object I\u2019m making. I reheat, sit at the bench and begin to shape the glass using both gravity and the Jills, a cooling and shaping tool. The Jills is kind of like a large pair of tongs. It hasn\u2019t changed much in design for 2,000 years. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Glass artists use a variety of tools to shape their work.
\n AP Photo\/Gerry Broome<\/a><\/p>\n

I ask for some air from my teammate, and she blows into the pipe while I\u2019m shaping the glass. The bubble transforms into a pill shape, slightly wider at the bottom. I constrict the area right in front of the pipe. I\u2019m focusing on shape and heat, taking care to not let the glass get too cold. If the glass drops to about 1,000 F (538 C), it enters a danger zone. If it\u2019s not yet finished, it needs to be warmed up in the reheating chamber; or if it is done, put away in a kiln to cool slowly. <\/p>\n

If glass cools too quickly, the molecules freeze into a chaotic pattern, which causes stresses that result in fracture. To combat this volatility, when the glass object is done and ready to be cooled, we place the object in an annealer<\/a>: a kiln set to a resting temperature of 930 F (500 C). <\/p>\n

This temperature is like a Goldilocks zone for our glass: It\u2019s not so hot that the glass will deform, but not so cool that the glass will stress and break. Once the kilns are full, a computer guide takes them down to room temperature over about 10 hours.<\/p>\n

As I continue to work on my cup, I get more heat, focusing on the very end of the bubble \u2013 the part that will be the base of the cup. I then sit down and have another member of my team flatten the bottom with a wooden paddle while I tool the glass with the Jills to keep its shape. The cycle continues on and on. <\/p>\n

The process is quick, but also there are so many little steps that it would take nearly a full-length book to describe them all. When asked how long it takes to make a tumbler, I\u2019ll often answer, \u201cAbout 10 years or 10 minutes, depending on how you think about time and material knowledge.\u201d This is both glib and true. Glass demands attention, dedication and a willingness to make connections between physics and chemistry and your observable experiences. It is a highly challenging and equally rewarding material to work with and alongside. I count myself very lucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Glass as a material is full of contradictions. Depending on the form and use, glass can be fragile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":958417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-958416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/958417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}