What is Glass? As defined by the American Society for Testing Materials, glass is "an inorganic product of fusion which has cooled to a rigid condition without crystallizing". Glass is a product of heating silica sand and other ingredients in a furnace at temperatures of 2300 to 2700 degrees fahrenheit. The raw materials of soda-lime glass(commonly used for hand-blown glass) are silica sand, soda ash, lime, salt cake, and feldspar. When glass is in its liquid or molten state it can be blown and manipulated into almost any shape. Hot glass has some of the same characteristics as honey. Above twothousand degrees Fahrenheit, glass is very runny and gooey. A glassworker must always turn the pipe that the glass is on to prevent it from falling to the ground as one might turn a knife or a spoon with honey on it to keep it from dripping. But as the glass cools, the molecules form a very rigid solid but they do not organize into a crystalline structure. How Glass is blown: The glassblower takes a blow pipe (a hollow metal pipe about four and half feet long) and dips the tip of the pipe into the molten glass in the furnace. He turns the pipe at a constant speed to wrap up an even "gather" of glass on the end of the pipe. Then, he exits the furnace and shapes the solid ball of glass on the marver(a flat sheet of steel) and then blows into the pipe to introduce a bubble into the solid mass. From there, more glass may be added by gathering again from the furnace. When the desired amount of glass is obtained, the glass can be manipulated into shape using the marver, gravity, heat, centrifugal force, and a variety of specialized hand tools. When the piece is finished, it is placed into an annealing oven to cool. Glass must cool down slowly in order to release the stress present in it. The thicker the glass the more time it takes to anneal (the process of releasing the stress in the glass). For example, to anneal glassware a quarter inch thick, it takes about six to eight hours.

The above was from http://www.volcanogallery.com/glass.htm I was hunting for some blown volcanic glass from Kilauea but thought this above would be a good introduction. Off to find some mouth-blown glass... /\~~~

http://www.lightweb.com/stainedglass.htm I have fed this lady's husband in my home on two occasions when he was head of Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory...

That bit of stained glass is a window in the HVO mentioned above. I've seen it - about 3 feet by 3 feet ( a meter square) and is absolutely gorgeous!

I want this one!!! Look a the rest of her work at http://www.lightweb.com/stainedglass.htm

Well, it turns out this lady has a different life from what I knew of her here. I wonder where Dallas Jackson is now....!

Theresa Ueltschey, I hope I spelled that right, does some fantastic glass work. She and her husband work together and she's out of Austin, Texas. Fire Island Hot Glass Studio - http://www.fireislandglass.com/ Features glass art by Matthew LaBarbera and Teresa Ueltschey. Includes a calendar of events, photos of their work, and a list of galleries where their work is on display. found after I did a google search on ueltschey.