Volumes of production

One-offs and batch production.

Unit price vs. capital investment

The biggest cost is the glass-blower’s labor. Assuming you want to produce a batch of identical shapes, molds can be used. Depending on exact quantities, these will be made from materials offering varying degrees of longevity, including wood, plaster, or graphite.

Speed

Completely dependent on the scale and complexity of the piece, and whether or not the glass is being blown into a mold.

Surface

Excellent.

Types/complexity of shape

For free-blown glass, virtually any shape is possible.

Scale

As big as the lungs of the glass-blower will allow, bearing in mind that the blower also needs to wrestle with the weight of the glass at the end of the tube.

Tolerances

Difficult to be precise, because it is a handmade process.

Relevant materials

Any type of glass.

Typical products

Anything from tableware to sculptures.

Similar methods

Lampworking (p.118) and machine-blown glass made using blow and blow (p.120) or press and blow (p.124) molding.

Sustainability issues

As with all glass working, energy consumption is high due to the intense heat required over long stretches of time. But because products are shaped by hand no additional machinery is necessary, which helps to balance energy use. Any faulty moldings or broken glass can be melted down and recycled back into the process on site to reduce material consumption.

Further information

www.nazeing-glass.com

www.kostaboda.se

www.glassblowers.org/

www.handmade-glass.com

Lampworking Glass Tube

Product	thin-walled vases
Designer	Olgoj Chorchoj
Materials	borosilicate glass
Country	Czech Republic
Date	2001

These elegant vases illustrate the complexity of components that can be formed using this method. The internal opaque white form and the transparent external tube were made separately and joined together later on a lathe.

There are hundreds of ways of hand-working glass, employing both hot and cold (cutting, for example) processes for making objects without the need for tooling. Lampworking involves the localized heating of a piece of glass to allow it to be pushed, pulled, and generally shaped by a skilled craftsman. The process can be seen as providing a third alternative for shaping glass somewhere between expensive hand forming and mass-production that requires tooling. It is a process that is ideally suited to short production runs.

The process starts with a hollow tube of glass, which is set into a slowly rotating lathe. Heat from a blowlamp is applied to specific areas, which are then pushed with a wooden former. Lampworking involves soft, malleable glass being pushed into shape. Depending on whether closed or open forms are required, ends can be left open or rolled round and sealed off.

A tube of glass being locally heated while rotating on the lathe, before the wooden former is introduced.

–  Highly versatile process.

–  Shapes can be varied even within the same batch.

–  Cost-effective for experiments and prototypes.

–  Complex shapes can be formed.

–  This type of process for making glassware is generally used to make batch-produced products without requiring any investment in tooling.

–  Not cost-effective for large production runs.