I’ve been meaning to share some photos of the Chihuly exhibit in Boston for the last couple of months, but the Southeast Asia photographs preempted everything for a while. But these are just too beautiful to keep under wraps any longer. I don’t have any commentary. The glass is everything.
I have always had a weakness for the beauty of blown glass, but never, until this weekend, have I seen it actually being blown. So everything going on at the Icefire Glassworks in Cannon Beach, Oregon was new to me: how many layers of glass and color; how many times the work in process goes in and out of the fire; how many different fires are used; how many different ways the color can be applied; how many times the glass is blown and blown again before it is finished.
How like a dance the process is! The molten glass is always in motion, and the creators work together in choreographed teamwork.
The process is elemental; in days of fantasy and yore, glassblowers would have been mages and sorcerers, combining in their secret rhythms the glass and powders and grains of the earth, the air of their breath, the fire of three forges. And—yes—water, essential for shaping the glass and insulating the tools. Steam so hot that it is invisible and does not burn.