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Glass Blowing: The growth and basic concepts of this ancient art form

Glass blowing first came about in the first century B.C. in the Syro-Palestinian region. Here craftsmen made simple unadorned vessels. The craft soon after reached the Roman Empire, where they experimented with it, and mastered in on the island of Murano in 1291.

A GLASS WORKING REVIVAL IN THE AIR

Today, the Italians are still some of the most skillful glass blowers, and helped inspire the art glass movement. And in the past 40 years, there has been an avid interest in the craft, making it one of the most quickly growing art forms in North America.

This is because it used to entail using massive equipment and technical skill, but thanks to ceramics professor Harvey Littleton and chemist Dominick Labino, who experimented with glass blowing in the 60’s and came up with a new way to blow glass in a small furnace, the art form is on the rise. Now fine modern blown glass art can be seen in galleries and pieces of glass are more readily available than before.

Blowing glass involves forming glass into objects with air pressure while the glass is in a molten, semi-liquid state by blowing air into it through a tube. There is some confusion about what the craft is, though, because the term “glass blowing” is actually used for two different methods: glass working at a torch and glass working from a furnace (which should actually be referred to as lampworking and torch working)

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