Glass Blowing

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Glass Blowing is an ancient art that – amazingly given that few public schools today make it a part of the curriculum – continues to be a popular passion across the United States and the world. The tools for glass blowing have become slightly more sophisticated with time, but the complex – even dangerous – glass blowing process remains the same as it has for centuries. And it is deceptively simple sounding:

Glass blowing involves simply melting glass, inserting a “blower” tube into a gob of the molten stuff, blowing bubbles inside the gob while it is hot, and allowing the gob to cool.

This process is much easier said than done, however, as a quote from a popular glass blowing website warns beginners: “Glassblowing can be frustrating, but please restrain from angry outbursts or vitriolic tirades. NEVER throw or slam an object in the studio.”

As difficult as it is to master, glass blowing -- in even the simplest piece done by a novice – is simply magical. So the art has lived on. At first glance the precision of a high quality blown glass piece seems as if it must have been made by machine. But it was not, of course. That’s just part of the magic of glass blowing. The beauty of a piece often amazes even the artist.

Another feature of glass blowing makes the art a perfect fit for a new idea in memorials. Glass has long been used as a material for traditional cremation urns, but it is only relatively recently that artists have begun creating memorials with cremation ashes included in the glass. This new idea often strikes people as being inventive, unique or even “strange.” But, on further analysis, it’s actually quite natural.

Glass blowing is an art that has been practiced since the day, as legend has it, a group of Ancient Phoenician sailors accidentally discovered glass while cooking on a sandy beach. As those adventurers found, glass itself is formed of natural elements: sand, plant particles and lime.

So, it only is fitting that such a natural substance that is molded by such an ancient process would be home to something as sacred and as natural as cremation ashes. The eternal, even Godly, nature of this combination is poetry in itself.

To create a glass blown piece that includes a bit of cremation remains, an artist simply rolls layers of hot glass into a sample of ashes before the glass is shaped. The ashes then become, well, one with the sand and other natural elements that have formed the glass.

And that helps brings a brand new meaning to the phrase “Ashes to Ashes …”

A limited amount of research on this topic shows that this idea of adding cremation ashes to molten glass is, indeed, relatively new. But, technically speaking, it could have been done hundreds – or maybe even thousands – of years ago. Such a fact makes it unique in the realm of modern innovations. That’s just one more amazing, dare say spiritual, thing about glass blowing.

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