🍷 Glassblower

A glassblower is a craftsperson who shapes objects from molten glass. He or she gathers a blob of glowing glass on the end of a long pipe and blows until it swells like a bubble. The piece is then shaped and cooled. Bowls, flasks and drinking cups are made this way.

The method is old. Glassblowing was invented in the first half of the first century BC in the Syro-Palestinian region, and finds from Israel point to around 50 BC. The Roman writer Pliny called it flatu figurare, "shaping by breath", and counted it among the techniques that made the city of Sidon famous.

The Getty Museum describes the steps in detail. First a gob is gathered on the pipe. The first breath makes a bubble, the parison. The neck and body are finished while the piece is still on the pipe. Then a metal rod, the pontil, is attached to the base and the pipe is cut off. You can also blow into a mould: the piece is inflated into the cavity, the rim is finished freely and handles are added. Free-blowing needs no mould; mould-blowing does.

Blowing changed the market, because it made glass accessible. Vessels took less glass and were quicker to make, so glass stopped being mainly a luxury. Pieces turned up in almost every middle-class household, and after the first century AD blowing became the dominant technique. Around the middle of that century it spread from the Syro-Palestinian region to Italy, Switzerland and Dalmatia, and craftsmen from the East, the Sidonians especially, moved to Rome.

When you hold a wine glass, remember that its ancestors are the same kind of cups blown two thousand years ago. For the object itself see Wine glass.