Next to the Fire

Jimi said: "C,mon let me stand next to your fire." At the Nourot Studio you can get as close as you dare to the molten glass. Blown Glass class was held last Saturday April 21, 2012 for five students. The results were rather good. Not everyone can take the heat, especially on the hottest Spring day of the year. We were too busy showing our students how to gather, shape and blow their unique glass creations to notice the raising temperatures. But when the last piece went into the oven we all headed home for a needed cool shower.

Here are some people learning to blow glass for the first time. Chuck from Petaluma, California had his wife buy him a lesson. He made a really nice set of paperweights and a blown vase as well. Lois who made a pierced paperweight, was taking her third class. Sisters Clo and Lisa worked together. Experienced slump glass artist Diane made a really nice blown form that needed little finishing the next day.

Lessons of blown glass making with the maestro last 5--6 hours. You will get to make 4 or 5 things. The class costs $325. and is scheduled when there are six students signed up. Nobody will go away without a real appreciation of the difficulty and beauty of the glass arts. No two pieces are ever exactly duplicated when blown by hand. That is what makes blowing glass so exciting and fun. You get to see the glass bend, twist and expand into shapes seen only in the mind of the glass maker. Why not try a lesson and challenge your creative side?

 Nourot Glass Studio has also done "corporate team building" for Genentech in Vacaville, California. Those 10 production workers were using a really different skill set at the glory hole than they usually did concocting laboratory mediums and drug bases. It was fun seeing people with a scientific background wonder about the nature of molten glass. Their day to day work involves mixing an exact formula of compounds, resulting in a pure and chemically correct mix.