Earth Sciences Forum

Andre · Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 1:28 pm Post subject: Glass art

I bought these two glass bulbs the other month at a local art fair

Size and shape as in Christmass tree balls, of hand blown glass but with a complex delicate glass object inside.

Looks like ship in a bottle but how do you get an object like that inside during the glass blowing?

_________________
Moderator of http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/climatesceptics/

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."

Charley Brown

Baywax · Joined: 23 Jul 2007 Posts: 113 Location: Pacific West Coast

There's a glass blowing factory on Granville Island in Vancouver you can visit. When you watch how they do it you can see that there is a primary blob of molten silica-sand (glass). So, just guessing, I'd say that the objects in the middle of the bulbs are the primary material for the bulb... normally there may not have been as much material and it would have all become the spherical glass. In this case there may have been the intention to use too much material so that some thing was left in the centre.
_________________
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. Leonardo Da Vinci

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
W.C. Fields

John L · Joined: 03 Nov 2007 Posts: 21

They probably got it in there by blowing the glass bubble larger, and then piercing it near the base where the arm attaches to the glass. Then once is was inserted through the elastic hole, a tool was used to constrict the portion where the incision was made. Then the glass was clipped there and reattached to the arm and put back into the furnace and the very turning motion of the artwork would move back and forth within the bubble.

Each time the inserted glass would drop to the inside of the bubble, it would stick and leave the thin line as it dropped to another part of the glass bubble, as it was turned. After so many times, it would have many attachments.

That's just my guess.