Blenko Festival of Glass

This weekend Blenko is having their Glass Festival.

For more info, click here.

Mrs. Hill and I went to share the awesome experience of making glass with our families.
Here is a video of my son making the small version of the water bottle I made on my first trip to Blenko in June.



while there, I had an opportunity to watch them make Christmas ornaments and was able to compare the process to what we did in Pittsburg.  I found that although each glass blower has their own refining techniques, the basics of the process were the same.  They used crystal glass as the base, rolled the glass in their preferred color(s) and then added another layer of crystal.  The process of blowing it into a ball was the same for all but the way they "broke" the ornament away from the blowing rod was different.

I was able to have my sons blow glass and used this as an opportunity to try out some of my teaching ideas on them as they went through the process.  I even had a few other "students" in the group listen to what I was teaching as well.

We got to talk with A. Blenko and shared our blog address with him and told him about our interest in working with Blenko and the students at our school to try and instill a sense of appreciation for an art that is a big part of the history of our state and our town.