Chris Rochelle Guest Artist Demonstration

thanks for joining us tonight also on our live stream so we have some viewers from the internet so thank you tonight our master gaffers gonna be Chris Rochelle right here so let's start by giving a nice warm welcome he'll be assisted by Dane Jack myself Josh swabs and Benjamin Ewing over there so there will be the team tonight but yeah thanks [Applause] all right so Chris has already started the process he's actually picked up a little bit of color so he's chosen a nice kind of neutral gray and he's using bar or rod so it comes to us in a bar form and we chop a little chunk off of that and he's already preheated that into an oven and a thousand degrees now he's picked it up on a blowpipe so today Chris is going to assemble this piece right here nice kind of intricate goblet with some tulips as our stem so we're know this one's all one color we're gonna use a different colors on the one tonight I think right next to a man that we actually have one that will make right there it's charcoal kind of smoky gray on top thanks Green and cranberries in the middle then any point if anybody has questions just let me know same as any viewers online let us know we'll answer your questions so Kristin's are gonna really get this rod nice and hot he'll a sensor that color and then it'll also pop a bubble into that color so Chris is our gaffer tonight so he's the person in charge of the piece of glass he's also in charge of the team that's helping out so he's kind of like our quarterback tonight he'll touch that color bar on the marver marvering it centering cooling and shaping all at once now here we go he'll start a bubble into that creating a little pressure by blowing into the pipe capped it with this finger and this will be our foot the bottom piece of our assembly tonight we're gonna let this cool down a little bit we're gonna add one more layer of clear glass over the top of this Chris right now just letting that color cool down if it goes and gathers too hot or too soon it just could fall right back off in the clear glass and we don't want this color to contaminate our clear so Danes taken over the pipe there Chris has already assembled few the pieces earlier today so he's made our tulip heads our tulip stems some of our leaves and they're in our garage so it's got a funny name the garage because you can Park pieces of glass in there throughout the day keeping it warm so we pull up another another piece of glass out of the garage a sphere that he's made ahead of time all right so this little little game plan here this is gonna make us one of the stems to show us how that is made and also so we have a backup to in case we have any failures or mistakes happening during the process so oka ROG those two pieces right now and we'll make one of those stems just in case there any questions right now yeah what causes the black coloring so all different metal oxides will pick em into the glass so in your dark blue you got cobalt oxide green you got iron oxide so in our black there's no true black it's either a really dark purple or a really dark green so purple you got manganese green you got iron oxide or sometimes chromium so all comes down to different metal oxides from the periodic table now I'll throw you for a question what makes pink any guess anybody just shout it out gold yeah green awesome so gold will make a nice pink or cranberry color gold chloride specifically so it's usually one of the most expensive colors in glass how about our online viewers any questions from those alright so chris is a got a little glass there he's rolling through some powder some mom I think we got our nice cranberry color here so we can use color in all different forms either powder frits which it's in a granular form or we can use bra or rod form Benjamin is over there at the garage just kind of keeping an eye of things in the garage there's also hot spots and cold spots so if we keep the glass in those hot spots too long I can start to slump or adjust to the shape that we have Chris has been blown glass a long time about 20 years so it makes us look very easy and a couple run-throughs of this throughout the past few weeks so he's using a crimp tool there just a flat one and you set up a little kind of a little tool set over there spoons I know they're not really tools but he's got some spoons over there and you'll press this glass against that creating one of our tulip leaves here he goes away down there he's got another spoon to press the top of that I know really technical right so you can do a lot with a butter knife a spoon and a fork and make a lots of different things and glass with those three things well now pinch the back of that to create a little bit of a spine or profile into that leaf what's the temperature of the oven yeah great question so our furnace is 2100 degrees Fahrenheit the reheating chambers are also at that temperature so we can adjust those if need be so I think Chris actually a little bit ago I told Dane to adjust this reheating chamber a little bit either a little colder a little hotter depending on the gaffer's choice we're always working around those temperatures 2100 degrees Fahrenheit so we'll turn off the reheating chambers when we're done for the evening but the furnace right in the center of the shop will never turn that off that's like the heart beats it's got all the glass in there about a thousand pounds of glass all right so back to Chris is using a little bit of powder there give it a little bit of details here glass powder can give you a really awesome realistic looks to the glass also if the powders on the surface sometimes you can get this matte finish to all depends on your design yeah question sorry yeah how much energy is going into all of the steps and whatnot how that compares to I would say it's kind of like a long sprint you know your your your body is definitely a UH at labor here especially when things get very heavy very complicated Chris has spent a few hours ahead of time creating some of these parts also so yeah the heat energy how much energy is going through here so this is all natural gas equipment so a lot of energy nowadays most hot shops are running off natural gas that's usually how they're run nowadays back in the day it was all enough either coal or wood so someone got the not-so-fun job of shoveling coal and wood all day long he actually behind her amber theaters all my can of what an old glass actually would look like bunch of different reheating chambers on one kind of round building alright so Benjamin's gonna babysit one of those leaves there Dayne is I think started a second one a lot of the tools really haven't changed over the glass making history most of the things that changed is the equipment behind us any other questions right now all right so we had a few questions come in from our online how much raw material cost is it it's a little bit over a dollar or so per pound really the cost comes to the melting the the glass to its raw state was our second question Amanda yeah so why so much glass in our furnace well we use this furnace every single day 24 hours a day seven days a week so we never turn it off we never want it to get so low there's a thousand pounds of glass in there when that tank is at 200 pounds the tank is very very low we don't want to slide our pipes or Pontes very far into the furnace because they'll get very hot and also the bottom and the tank the glass sometimes isn't that the best quality so we always keep it somewhat full on the bottom and the tank we run can run into something called cords or the glass actually changes a little bit the flux burns out all right so back to them they've got the three petals on there crystal oh Justin it uses a hot torch there to kind of spot heat different areas it's a natural gas oxygen mixture we also have a propane torches this we call a fluffy torch so much broader spa heating so Chris just giving you a little bit of detail there to those leaves it's all the details on making glass giving him a little bit of gesture now I got that nice beautiful spine detail on the back of those leaves - or petals sorry we have a beautiful shot there by our AV team so one thing we always do or making glass is turning if we ever stop turning the glass one of the tonton F will actually fall on the floor so we always are keeping that pipe rotating so Chris will kind of score it there with his diamond sheers that way later we can get this off the iron all right so we had another question come in from our online is there a color out there after the glass cools you know that it would we could would love to have that's not out there but there's about a 200 colors out there from companies like Reichenbach it's a Germany German company that makes a lot of colors I was asking some of the guys up here what's what's a color that we would love to have that's you know not out there most of them are out there and you know Dean would just tell me you know there's not a true black and I was talking about that earlier you know we have colors that appear black but there's no true black out there just like paints it's are either a really dark green or really dark purple why isn't their true black do well just like paint is you can't there's no pigment out there to create a black tint there's things that can appear black let me come on over there this here yeah sorry yes so we actually put up powder on the surface so he's using glass powder it's a lot finer than frit like you just said yeah so it adds a little bit of extra detail he wanted to create just a little bit of a realistic effect to these petals of his tulips yeah glass powder is amazing you can do a lot with glass powder yep he'll make another piece here rolling through that powder powder is great also cuz he gives you a really nice distribution of the color across the surface but if you don't use enough of it it also can thin out so we're not blowing these pieces these are solid pieces right now if we stretch that powder that can actually lose that color too you know pigment so again Benjamin is keeping an eye and everything in the garage right now I'm never gonna get ready to make this stem here so in our stem is they actually have a little bit of texture so Chris is probably gonna go into an optic mold here pushing the color into these condensed lines then we also have to secrete this nice beautiful gesture so Kristin actually has a template over here he'll use in just a little bit to create this nice beautiful curve or gesture to our stem all right so here goes goes into a bronze optical and again they'll create these thick and thin lines and since that color is on the surface it pushes that color into these thick and thin lines so Chris is just twisting those lines he's grabbed a hold of the diamond sheers pulling that it's watching the diameter how fast or how thick gets pulling or how thin it's pulling and adjusting as necessary they'll cut off that remainder there you give this nice beautiful gesture so he's got a a template over here little piece of kiln shelf has got a little sketched or pencil drawing on that so he can make sure he gets exactly the way you would like it no fire polish that area that we cut free they don't actually flatten out a little bit firm the area for the tulip to sit on back to the reheating chamber we weighed out the air temperature too long let the glass cool too much it will start to crack so our cadence between the reheating chamber and the bench definitely picks up when things get complicated and intricate don't want the glass to cool too much and you're really using that torch to spy heat that top there flatten a little bit there I'll cut three little points to it in the back to the reheating chamber so using that torch again really making sure those areas he wants to manipulate or hotter than everything else I saw I'm just touched that torch back to the back area the moil we call it everything left on the pipe or punty that's the area that tends to get coldest quickest last thing in the reheating chamber is the first thing else that typically gets colder there quicker I'll pull these nice three points no already we'll add that nice tulip to that and take those three points and grab over that tulip is there any other questions right now no yeah do we make our own Ron glass we get it already pre melted into a little we call a collet form it looks like little ice cubes then we remelt it into its liquid state yeah good question comes to us in 50-pound bags we shovel that into there usually a few times a night depending on the night but yeah there is a way to melt raw material though in the glass called batch so another different building here on our campus so called a studio it's across the parking lot some classes and and other activities happen in that building they melt raw material into glass yeah yeah raw material so silica sands silicon dioxide soda ash a limestone that comes - it's already pre-mixed we just shovel that in so it usually comes to us from a you know company that mines it out of the out of the Earth's crust silica sand is that one of the most common found in the Earth's crust so it's mined a lot around the world but you usually get ours from North Carolina spruce pine so it's a coefficient of 87 coefficient of expansion it's alright here we go I'll grab that tulip head I'll land it down right where in that middle beautiful what do you think should we give him a nice round of applause for that yeah now we'll adjust it a little bit it's still freshly hot setting on there so he'll give a little bit gesture the null spot he'd those three points and make sure those land just how he liked them too grab his tweezers and then back to the reheating chamber some flashing by Dane a flash is just that term we use for a maintenance heat lighting the glass get too cold again we'll make a crack so we got a flash the piece a few times in that reheating chamber but if we stand there too long the whole thing can start to move and we don't want that why don't we just keep it wet on the torches and get it hot like that way yeah and maintain the heat well there's a lot of different temperatures running across that piece and towards the iron the moil we call that that typically can get coldest quickest so we could just sit there and torch that area but everything else can get too cold sometimes we will do that well use two torches and kind of really heat everything up but really the best way to do it is use that reheating chamber it's a nice even temperature in there there's a computer holding a setpoint temperature and when we start assembling the entire Goblet together we'll probably use a few torches torching the specific areas so you can see how much time goes into these small details that's why Chris assembled a few these earlier today now when he made him he made sure every single one is the exact same height same gesture that way when we set them on the piece they all look a symmetrical his finding his mark where he wants to actually score it or squeeze a wine into that that little quick measurement tells them Waring's that cut that free from the iron we won't actually cut it will make a mark that we can actually break the glass which is a great glass blower Chris says he's also an excellent glass breaker so we gotta find an area that you want to create a stress point or a weak spot that snaps the glass we call it a jack line some people call it a neck line or a restriction line but think of it like your chocolate Hershey's bar you snapped your little chocolate pieces well simple essentially just snap at the glass at that line so there's that big torch called a fluffy torch it's kind of heating everything for a few seconds some last-minute details there so we're here we have Benjamin keeping a spear warm all right Chris we'll put that in the garage we'll Park it and we have a kind of metal kind of shovels we can kind of pick those pieces up out of there and bring them over to another piece of glass attachment all right so we're gonna start to assemble this piece together now I made one of those stems of the tulip on there and we have a few again a few other ones made that were made ahead of time earlier today it's not just the back up in case we need an extra so Benjamin's gonna bring over a little bit of clear glass and making a little bowl do we call it it's a little bit of a kind of a transition piece of glass when you're adding parts so I'll drop it on there Chris will cut it free then immediately Chris will start to shape and center that okay so we'll add a blown foot to this so earlier we picked up that color bar crystals doing that right in the beginning steps Danes already got that ready to go over there now we'll add one more layer of clear glass over that put trade off with Dane there all right so can we roll that animation for gathering right now so take a look at our monitor so if we cut out the side of our furnace that's what you'd see a hemispheric pot crucible we call it holding the glass thousand pounds sitting inside that Chris pulls it up very much like honey or taffy at that temperature of 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit an axe similar to taffy or honey so organized that fresh layer by using a block it's a wooden shaping tool it's made out of cherry wood soaked in water its entire life the water creates a layer of steam in between the glass and the tool so really it's not touching the wood until that moisture is gone as soon as that moisture is gone the wood starts to burn so we'll keep that in the water its entire life those tools can last months up to years the small ones they last you know let's say 6-8 months because we use them for almost everything now the larger ones these don't get replaced very often because we don't use them on every single piece so you can see I'm starting to stretch that will create our blown foot shape they'll squeeze a jack line into that they'll create somewhat of a sometimes I like to call like a Hershey's kiss shape so I'll trade it off with Dane here Dane will get that bubble hot again and we'll drop our bubble called a dropped blown foot all right swatch here Dean's got that nice and hot he'll stop turning crystal gravel hold it'll guide it down he's blowin slightly as well I'll touch it down make sure nice contact pull up a little bit don't blow you know cut free beautiful just yeah that's nice round of applause just doing that movement itself takes many many years of practice again chris has been blowing glass 20 years or so there's always got a lot of practice now that bubble is closed so we need to get that bubble open here in just a little bit he'll center it right now I don't start squeezing another jack line or restriction line into that he'll also push the bubble back towards itself making it wider then the moment will break the glass from them that spot so right now he just squeezes that to re-inflate to the bubble a little compressed air there cools that jack line down and then he'll grab a hold here squeeze and our system Benjamin a little tap pop right off there it is so we've got it open now I mean you're gonna get this real nice and hot chris is gonna open this nice and flat to a beautiful foot Christie gonna fold the lip on this okay so Chris has been making this a few times the past few weeks sell kind of have an idea of the steps that he does he'll fold the lip on this creating a double lip effect and also use this tool called a soffietta it's a blowing tool we can plug the hole and blow through the tube expanding the shape again since they're not on a blowpipe anymore there's no way for us to blow through that rod that tool is a great adjustment and we can see inside our chamber there and that's possible because of Corning in 1934 there's a special glass developed called fused silica just pure silicon sand melted together what that does is it has a lot of properties retain into heat so we can put that little piece of fused silica in our reheating chamber and have a camera look at behind that directly into the reheating chamber if used the silica was it developed in 1934 there wasn't a lot of use for it until a space-age 1950s NASA approached Corning and asked if there is a window that we could put on our spacecrafts nowadays we also use it for fiber optics so Chris has got that foot nice and wide he'll paddle against benjamin's paddle they're slightly creating a nice gesture profile to that foot [Music] all right so they're gonna add a little punny patch they're just a little insurance for later we're gonna attach another punty to that area sometimes we can either scallop out the piece when we're taking it off or finished also we can take away some color too so this will give us a little insurance that we don't scallop out the color or the piece so Krista's just talking to Dane here about the next few steps all right sadena started the punty it's a little bit of glass as a temporary handle to hold on to the entire object this step is all about the three T's of blowing glass timing temperature and teamwork now don't forget them now so if your timing and temperature is off just a little bit we can have a floor model we don't want those dana's cooling that glass by marvering it across that metal surface known as the marver he's chilling it to a point where it's still sticky but it was not going to fuse to the bottom of the foot alright there's the head nod from Chris it'll take one more final flash on the foot Dan he'll take a quick flash of the punty and we'll adhere the two irons like I said this is a temporary handle so we want this alight connection so we're finished we can take it right back off that iron nice and clean all right here we go Hill Center the two irons sometimes people ask does the pipe ever get hot yeah it does towards the top so that's why you see Chris holding that iron there with those tweezers you can't touch that area but you see Danes hand that shiny area that's the kind of safe zone beautiful transference give a nice round of applause again all right so Chris we'll take a quick look make sure it's running just on center here that's off center a little bit you want to correct it as soon as you can okay you got so we're gonna attach some leaves here to that sphere Benjamin has already prepared one of the leaves all right so we got one leaf attached there we'll do that two more times Benjamin's shaping that up too if somewhat of a point or taper that way when Chris applies it he's got options you can take a little bit you can take a lot of it just sets the gaffer up for success so number to contact he'll pull it cut it free cuts it on an angle like that to help them set it up to be that nice leaf shape flat crimps tweezer move give it a little gesture so you notice he's going back and forth quite often now the glass is thinned out so it cools quicker that's why we have to keep a nice even temperature throughout the the process now and if he stays out too long waits for that third leaf and it attaches it sure it might going great but when he goes back in that reheating chamber if it's too cold it can crack the entire thing so it's always be better safe than sorry Chris is just adjusting there all right so leaf number three alright so I'm gonna jump in here and help out in a little bit we've ran through this a few times so we kind of all have a certain step so we kind of know what's gonna happen you got it okay you got it so weird you're ready to start attaching some of our stems so Danes gonna start picking them up out of the garage so we're just gonna flip back and forth we're just kind of spot heating an area Danes got that warm there it'll spot heat that as well down now up it's right there one more flash ripping on your rights all right yep so it's kind of like a dance now yep and up yep right there so it's ashes are right there with those tool that claw tool hold on so we go straight down alright now I gotta do that two other times a little movement there Chris so just as necessary making sure it's just the way he wants it then we'll let that kind of set up a little bit well maintain a nice temperature making sure it doesn't cool too much it's kind of maintain the flashing temperature so Dane will wait for that next cue for stem number two so you can just brush there to kind of wipe off any any dust or residual sometimes things in the garage can pick up a little kiln shelf dust all right flipping flip on your left Dean hot side up hot side down and hot side up again attachment number to go straight up and down again right you got it staying level that second one we just put on still warm so he'll adjust it there it is great skill right here you got it every time we set it down we have to set it down very gentle it's all delicate things now Dane's got stem number three but on your left een yep so it's lots of communication between us three right now make sure everybody is running just right so hot side down and up straight up and down flash this yeah yeah beautiful round of applause there [Applause] there you go I'm gonna crack this other door here to create us a little more room so he's gonna take a couple quick heats to get everything running back in tune the same temperatures and he'll do some finer adjustments to make sure it's just how he wants it we're gonna put another sphere to connect all three stems on the top so if those are off a little bit they won't have a nice symmetrical to that sphere so he's just telling Dane go ahead and flash whenever you think it's comfortable for the temperature-wise that his means come out of the garage into that reheating chamber looking great Chris looking great so we're gonna do a quick little check daniel bring over that sphere make sure it's just right how we want it all right so we have a little bit of clear glass as a acting as a glue bit he'll take three little pieces from that then we'll stick that sphere right onto those three little areas there we are beautiful so back to the reheating chip yeah nice round of applause again so we'll kind of get some heat back into the piece making sure it's running just right again adjusting those little glue bits all right so we're getting ready to put this stem away we're gonna put this into our our hot box it's just an anywhere at 900 degrees to keep it warm and then we'll start making the top of our vessel we'll pick this stem up here in a little bit so Danes got some gloves there he'll stand by just in case this pops off the iron when we put water on it Chris is gonna tap this off himself into this kneeler or hotbox sometimes when we drop water on that connection in the back it can smooth release the entire object all right a little bit of water creates stress and weakness to that punty connection when went on there too good temperature shook it should come off nice and clean also all right go into our 900 degree oven a light tap pops right on skim another round of applause all right so half way done half way done all right sorry about that had a little microphone change so we had a question come on online do we ever get back a pressure more blowing glass yeah when things are really big we're blowing a really large sphere when we blow when we stop there's a little bit of back pressure coming out it's not a lot not gonna you know push our our hair back into our face or anything like that but yeah it's a common thing that happens on a large-scale class alright so we're gonna pick up another chunk of color here Chris we'll start a collar again so we can match the same color as our foot and our top of our vessel to cut part all right sorry we're gonna do into overlay not a collar sorry there's two different ways to apply a rod or bar either overlaying it over a bubble otherwise picking up it on a collar and that's what we did in the first part the cuff we just stuck it right onto a little bit of clear glass and blew right through it now the second approach we're gonna do an overlay so Chris is gonna create a bubble Dana's gonna get the glass the same color that bar nice and hot and well overlay across that bubble it's a little breath cap of the finger great pressure and Chris cooled the glass nice and evenly so it has the same temperature across the piece so that's what allowed that bubble to grow nice and evenly that shape is crooked or it's not the right temperature across the entire piece of glass that bubble can shoot out the side or can shoot at the bottom and you got a really crooked bubble just making the even bubble like that takes years of skill no cool that down Danes got that color almost nice already so shorten that color bar by using that marver make it nice and wide and short that way when we drop it on to the bubble Chris has a little bit of time to kind of allow it to flow evenly it over that bubble alright so Benjamin's is making a little bit of a some dust from a soft brick we're gonna use that later for something called a dirty punty we're gonna roll our Ponty right before we attach it to a piece of glass through that dust creating a little bit of a resist across the surface so it doesn't it fully adhere that way when we take it back off the iron with a light tap it pops off really easy because of that soft brick dust some people roll it on the floor for a second to create it a little bit of dust on that as well so probably both techniques here or any other questions right now yeah yeah so how large is the team we see four of us helping up here on this one piece of glass and how complicated or intricate it is so it depends on the piece so you know something very large we've worked on teams of ten on one object before everybody has a job some people are you know shielding someone's arm that person might also be shielding someone else's arm and that person might be shielding someone else's arm so you can have three shields sometimes on very large things sometimes is a second person's help of rolling the pipe because it's very heavy when it's very large sometimes we have two people help rolling that pipe yeah so all depends on the piece though the big Chihuly piece that's here in the museum there's all those are all what kind of made in part so they're not I mean full-scale everything together it's very large but each piece is made individually but we have the capability of working very large in this shop we're at the corning museum of glass so we have a little bit of spoiled toys here we have some very large equipment so right over here is one of our largest piece of equipment the large reheating chamber the gem bow so we have one two three four eight sets of doors on that so it's a very very large diameter well use it occasionally when we make very large things but we're not making something that large we don't need to turn that on because it's so much heat coming out of that big piece of equipment all right so I'm gonna toss off some of the microphone duties here to Dane he's gonna kind of narrate the rest of the process I'm gonna jump in and help Chris here so thanks for listening to me to me thanks guys all right thanks Josh that's all a question over here yeah yeah yeah so the question is anybody working on trying to use more sustainable energy for glassblowing there are some people to do it yeah I mean you really need a lot of electricity so I'm not sure how many solar panels it would take to run a shop but if you're going to do that you would definitely scale it down quite a bit I mean this is a it's a small studio in the whole scape of things but this is still quite a bit of energy being used so I don't think you'd be able to power this studio with a you know solar power but some things that people are doing that I know of is taking methane from capped landfills and using that to power a studio all the studios that are like that I know they might have one small furnace that melts about a hundred pounds of glass and then one small glory hole or a reheating chamber but that's something that is being done today yeah because it really uses a lot of energy and you know when you look at the price of a piece of glass that definitely goes into it it's not cheap to run a studio the fact that you know these furnaces the glory holes we can keep on for the day and then turn off at the end of the day come back in the morning it takes about maybe two hours to heat up but the furnace has to keep running all the time so you know that's the the real kind of the money sucker the whole process yeah yeah good question you've got a question for me what is it Amanda what's the lifespan of all the equipment that we have here on stage well I think that that really depends on the people that are using it and how well you take care of it you know a good tool if you take good care of it it's gonna last for a long time you know we've had equipment for 10 years that we've been able to maintain and they look almost new you know so I think it's really all about just doing regular maintenance you know I think that there's a lot of equipment that could probably last longer although people are maybe trying to be a little bit more efficient they might replace reheating chamber that with something like a more efficient burner so there's things like that that maybe you would upgrade for but you could definitely continue to to just do maintenance and keep a piece of equipment going for quite some time yeah so we did a little handoff with a microphone just to give Josh a little break but he's also been working with Chris for the last maybe few attempts of this chris has been practicing the shape a few times just to get the steps down and it really is important to have your whole team on the same page so it's chris is an excellent glass bore and he's also a really great communicator if you haven't worked with him before you can walk onstage and he's really good about telling you what he needs and how he needs it on the fly but of course like a sports team that practices together all the time it's just gonna be a little more fluid if you've already run through those motions together so I'm happy to step away as the piece comes together it's gonna be a really kind of intense little last few minutes of the piece I think time we're doing really technical work like it applying all those bits for the stem I don't know about all of you but I'm very quiet and very focused and it seems like there's a lot of tension in the room you might feel that up here we do this all the time so we don't quite feel that tension so much but we're definitely focused you know we don't maybe talk so much about things that aren't glassful in our thing that aren't necessary while we're doing a really important step of the process so Oh question yeah yeah why do we use cherry wood opposed to oak or maple you know cherry wood for one it grows around here so it's the wood that we use you don't have to use cherry wood but something that makes cherry wood great for glassblowing tools is that because it's a sloped growing tree it tends to have a very dense grain pattern this makes the the wood burn away slowly but also a bit more even so that's a great reason for it but there's also a low SAP or resin content and the wood now if we were to use something that had a high resin content as the wood burned away it might leave a film on the surface of the glass that might or might not really make a big difference in the glass depending on the type of glass you're trying to make I know people who work in all-white glass and when they're doing that they're really particular about everything in their studio in fact one of the favorite tools that we have up here is this pad that Chris is going to use and that is just folded up newspaper well a lot of us we like to use newspaper that just has black print on it so we wouldn't use the cartoon section because that dye is it's burning it might leave a little film on the surface of the glass well people that are working in all-white glass you could really tell because it's such a stark stark contrast they might decide to use newspaper that has no print on it just so that there's not really that opportunity for the ink to get on the glass yep now Chris is making a bowl for the top of this piece and he's running through the steps of inflating the glass but we are going to have to break the glass free from the iron eventually and this little constriction that he's starting to create right near the head of the iron that is our weak spot I'd like to tell people that glassblowing really doesn't have much to do with blowing or inflating glass it's more about shaping the glass with different material with different tools but most importantly this process it's about temperature management you know if you can create temperature differentials throughout the glass and can control the temperature very precisely you can create a number of different shapes this is a really common way to see people blow glass now where Chris is sitting at the bench he's shaping the glass and he's having his assistant inflate the glass one of the perks of doing it this way is that as the glass is inflating it's always going to inflate at the hottest area well in an ideal world we have a temperature in the bubble that's equal all the way throughout but it just doesn't always happen so if the temperature isn't even and Chris is having somebody inflate it allows him to watch the bubble inflate he can tell where it's maybe a little hotter and he can adjust for that often times if the glass is blowing out in one area we might put a tool there like that newspaper to constrict the glass to hold that glass were inflating this way it's going to inflate somewhere else first now this constriction it's one of those things where you kind of eventually learn that it's just one of the most important steps in the process and if you don't get it right you can spend an hour creating a beautiful piece with wonderful color patterns and if you don't have this correct you might not be able to successfully get that glass off the end of the iron well naturally when glass inflates it really likes to be that bulbous kind of round shape and this is a really we call it a standard sphere it's a basic shape that we create and from here we're going to start to change the profile of the bubble if Chris wanted to make a tall vessel maybe he'd keep the glass and hold his iron towards the ground so that that hot glass begins to drip or run away from the piece Chris is doing the opposite now though holding the glass up in the air he allows that glass just to settle back on itself it becomes a bit squatter and a lot wider this shape that he's creating a low form like this it's one of the more challenging shapes to create in glass one is just getting the temperature equal to create the shape but also because it's such a wide lo shape it's very hard to spot he just the area that you need to move as we're opening the bowl and you'll see that a little bit later here so because of that the whole thing ends up getting a little bit hot and if you're not careful you might end up getting that kind of a little bit of an off-center shape but Chris is really skilled he's been doing this for again about twenty years and this is a shape that he really loves to make it's a great skill builder yeah you know there's a lot of different ways I think you know my my path and glass flying has been all on-the-job training Chris found glass in college I actually went to art school and I think that he just took one elective and glass making but he did a lot of stone sculpture and in college he was really into that but then after college Chris was able to get a job working for somebody as an assistant and he was basically there just to help this one person make their work day in and day out I think the the way that you you gain skill and glassblowing is through repetition so having a job where you're doing the same thing over and over again may sound monotonous but that's really just how you master anything right going to art school really has a lot of benefits to you know it teaches you to think like an artist so your ideas have some substance alright so they're going to add a little bit of glass on the bottom here these little connection bits there's a lot of different names for them sometimes we call them of Olie O's of Oh Leo's really kind of a traditional Venetian style technique and they often look like little kind of hourglass shapes really they're used as his connection points and I think it looks really great because it it separates the bowl from the stem and oftentimes the stem from the foot so it adds a certain bit of elegance to that piece now we really can't open this bowl up while we're connected to that iron so what we're going to do in just a moment here is we're going to transfer the glass to a separate iron and we've made a few punches already in this process so josh is going to start that Ponte right now this is one of the most important connections that you'll make in the piece you know the punty has to be just the right temperature the temperature really determines the strength of the connection so if you make a connection that's very hot it's going to be very strong it they'll fuse together those two pieces of glass bond and they don't ever want to break apart now sometimes that's exactly what we're looking for let's say you know we're we're adding a stem on to a cup or something like that we don't want that connection a break so we make sure that that's a very strong connection but this here is temporary we don't want it to break later on or we do want it to break later on so Chris is going to make this just a little bit colder of a connection because of that it'll be a fragile connection the trick is to not make it too cold or too fragile now at the end of the day this is Chris's piece and as the gaffer we kind of just have this code that you know the gaffer takes responsibility for everything that happens on the shop floor because they're the ones that are in charge of everything but without being said it makes things a lot easier if you have a team that is skilled and also a team that you work with all the time so Josh brings over that punty looks like a good connection there watch it's a light little tap the glass breaks free and I think the team deserves a nice hand for that [Applause] you gotta begin a good glass breaker if you want to become a good glass maker alright well this will be one of the longer heats in the show you know we have the glass that probably I'm going to guess somewhere around 1200 degrees Fahrenheit our glass begins to kind of stiffen up become solid right around 1200 degrees and we need the glass to be solid for us to fracture it from the iron a good working range might be about 16 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit but we really never know the temperature of the glass while we're up here we're just making educated guesses and a longer you've been doing this the more times you've failed and that all helps you make the right guess now something that you have to think about a lot and you could be a very skilled glass worker but maybe you're not so good at creating proportions putting something together like this it's really challenging to think about the the stem and the foot that you just made and then try to match the correct size for the bowl Chris of course he's really skilled he's really good at doing this but he has too much glass right now so we're going to remove some of that glass in a few minutes here he will be trimming through the top of the piece so he's got a set of shears that will allow him to do this people ask us all the time what it feels like to cut through hot glass and I think it kind of feels like cutting through an orange peel however you have to make sure that the glass is hot as soon as it starts to cool down it gets a little crunchy and then eventually it's solid so because of this Chris has a very limited amount of time to do this step yeah [Applause] he makes this look too easy and if anybody out there is blown glass before you know that it's not that easy but that's how it is if you watch somebody that's skilled they make it look effortless and if you watch a beginner they make the show very short so you might be able to see this bit of a temperature differential that I was talking about the top it's really hot but you can see this gradient of kind of glow of color in the glass and the bottom it's a bit colder it's still looking gray almost if he doesn't get the temperature just right the curve it's not going to be very gradual you might notice some kind of steps in it and it it just won't look right so this is one of those shapes a lot of the Italians this shape is called a tossa and Venetian style glass making they say that you don't find the Tata the Tata finds you and really the glass is controlling the pace of everything so you take your cues from the glass all the time I think that's a really beautiful shape right there and watching somebody that's killed while they're on their way to their final shape you might see a number of different shapes that's oftentimes the kind of the the process of somebody learning this maybe 10 years ago was the shape that Chris was trying to make but he just keeps tweaking it a little bit every time you know he keeps trying to refine his process constantly now this sort of tools that he has in his hands they're very similar to those steel bladed tools that Jack's that he was using earlier the wood is a really nice material to work with at this point for a few reasons one wood is not going to steal the heat from the glass as quickly as our steel bladed tools so it allows Chris just a few extra seconds of shaping time and a few seconds might not sound like a lot but seconds are everything in glass making and then the other is that they've got rounded blades they're not sharp like those steel plated jacks so they're less likely to leave any marks on the surface of the material you can see that he's kind of like doing a little chafing it doesn't look like the shape is changing a whole lot right now but he's doing the shaping and cooling and just trying to get the temperature right all the way throughout the glass before he reaches that final shape now you might be thinking we've got this bowl how are we going to connect the bowl to the stem when we've got a punji connected to the bottom of the bowl we're going to have to do it another punty transfer and this is when things start to get pretty interesting beautiful shape what do you all think of that [Applause] this next punchy I mean we call it an inside punchy because it is a punchy that is on the inside of the bowl things start to move a little differently off the end of the iron when you have a pun T on the inside all that weight is not off the iron it's actually back towards the iron so when you stop turning if that pun C is hot the glass it moves a little bit differently it kind of moves in an opposite way so it's something that you know when you've done it for a while you don't think anything of it but in the beginning it's a little hard to get your head wrapped around it this next punchy though it's got to be perfect if this punty is a little too hot this is the one where really counts because if this punty is too hot it's never gonna break off in one piece once we have that stem added on to the bottom that stem in foot now you see Josh rolled the glass on the table helping to pull all that glass off the end of the iron he rolls the glass on the floor and this seems a little weird but we're doing this to pick up a little bit of dust a little bit dirt on the side of the punty this way we have a smaller really hot contact patch this is one way to make that punty a little bit more fragile so he attaches it a drop of water stresses the glass thermally it just takes a light tap let's give it up for the team one more time all right so now we really just have to grab this stem and foot out of the box and connect it sounds easy right not so much Chris are you going to need my help for any bit of this process yep yeah well if you need me for anything else I'm here for you you got it we got a little question about the temperature of the furnace be good and yeah so we have this furnace we actually lowered it a hundred degrees from what we normally run this just because first of all this color is a soft color and it heats up quickly but also we've got all of these really yep we need to turn off the I'll do it I got it we need to we have all these really delicate connections so we want to make sure that they don't get too hot and start to move around on us too fast now you see Chris with a little brush there little broom and he's using that broom just to dust off the glass throw insulated brick that we have inside our furnace or I'm sorry inside our pickup box that's the little annealing box that Chris stored the stem in it's a really Airy light brick and it breaks apart pretty easy so sometimes we might get a little dust on there and if we heat it up too much it bonds it sticks right onto the surface so as long as we catch it in time we're able to just give it a little brush that goes right away here you go now to make sure that we have a solid connection we want to really have hot temperature on both the bottom of the bowl and the top of the stem so you see Chris and Josh they're doing this kind of process of just going back and forth or switching back and forth building the heat in just that area all right so here we go gonna go for that connection all right so we've got a little break there at a the area where we had those two or there's the three little blue bits that we put on right between the tops of the flowers and that little kind of decorative ball there so what we're going to do is we're just going to heat those areas up again we'll reconnect them a stronger connection using the torch I'm not sure if Josh touched base on this earlier but when we're working with the material we have to maintain a minimum temperature that's somewhere around 900 degrees Fahrenheit for our formula class we just want to make sure the glass doesn't cool too quickly because if it does the glass starts to shrink and that the surface is cooling faster than the core different areas begin to shrink at different rates the poles or pops the glass apart alright so we got that on there it's not over yet though we've got a little bit of adjustment to do before we're finished so we're making sure we got a good seal there you can see it it's not centered yet we'll take a good heat here and then we were just gonna make sure that the lip and the foot are running very even yep sounds good you know we always saying glassblowing it's not about what you can make it's about what you can fix anybody can get lucky once you got it yep we'll do it from the bottom side alright back in business [Applause] so you can see that the the stem it is moving around a little bit and believe it or not at this point in the process that's what we want if it's moving it means that it's warm it's not in a danger of breaking apart okay sounds good you got it so we're going to have to touch the glass with some tools and I was just torching the jacks and the paddle this way they're a little bit warmed up they're less likely to thermally shock the glass all right here we go [Applause] an indoor oven it goes all right let's give it up for Chris Rochelle on the team [Applause] [Music] you [Music] you you

Channel: Corning Museum of Glass

Views: 7,245

Rating: 4.5662651 out of 5

Keywords: Corning Museum of Glass, glass, glassmaking, glassblowing, guest artist, Amphitheater Hot Shop, Chris Rochelle, goblet, CMoG, Blown Away

Id: KDmobKWJEjk

Length: 88min 29sec (5309 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 23 2019