Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Making a Murano glass leaf


I just returned from visiting my glass factories in Italy and I thought I would shed a little light on part of the hand made, mouth blown, magical process of making glass objects.  I will do a couple of postings of other processes I find fascinating.  I hope this gives a renewed interest in the fascinating world of hand made, mouth blown glass.  I believe it is a little bit of magic and passion in our high tech world.


The molten glass is poured into a metal leaf form or shape.  This form will stop the now liquid glass from running all over and this will keep the thickness at the authentic voluptuous level.


The molten glass is scored to make the leaf veins.


The form is removed and the leaf is examined and begins the process of being curved.


The molten leaf is slid onto the warmed form.


The leaf will stay for a very short time here before it goes into to oven so that it can cool slowly, avoiding any cracks.


The finished piece.

I hope you find this as amazing as I do.  I have been working in the factories for longer then I would like to say and it never gets old.


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