Ask a New Yorker: Who are you, where am I, and what do you do?
Chris: Chris Duffy. 16 West Berry Street in Brooklyn. We’re in a community,
public hot shop where we do glass blowing. Anyone who has experience can rent
time here and come in and produce whatever they need. We also teach classes
and have workshops.
Ask a New Yorker: How long have you been a hot shopper?
Chris: I’ve been blowing glass for about 6 years. And I’ve been
working here for about 6 months.
Ask a New Yorker: Is this a profession or hobby?
Chris: For me it’s a profession. For a lot of people it is a hobby. I
actually studied glass blowing in college at The Cleveland Institute of Art.
Ask a New Yorker: Take us through the process.
Chris: Well over here is called the garage. This is what we use for some of
the more advanced techniques. But the main piece of equipment is the furnace,
which is basically a giant box about 2100 degrees, and the raw materials for
the glass go in there, which are basically sand and soda, which is a flux which
gets melted down. We go though hundreds of pounds a week of glass.
Ask a New Yorker: So once the glass is melted what’s next?
Chris: Well you would take a blow pipe and a gathering rod which are used to
remove the glass from the furnace. The way you create volume in a vessel is
by forcing a bubble through the blow pipe into the wad of glass. So that creates
the volume of the glass or the bowl. And as you’re working you can inflate
it more or less and shape it with different processes.
Ask a New Yorker: What the largest pieces you’re blown?
Chris: The largest thing I’ve ever blown would probably be a couple gallons,
five gallons at the most. That’s pretty huge though.
Ask a New Yorker: How long would that take to finish?
Chris: Probably about an hour. It’s really depends on the complexity
of the decoration or the elements involved.
Ask a New Yorker: How does the color enter the glass?
Chris: The color is manufactured by companies that produce colored glass, which
is added to the clear glass through a variety of different techniques.
Ask a New Yorker: So beginners are welcomed?
Chris: Yes, we have 1 hr work shops. We are doing one on St Patrick’s
Day. It’s a make your own beer mug class. We also do six week classes
which would be a little more involved.
Ask a New Yorker: What else should we know about glass blowing?
Chris: Glass blowing is typically a team sport. You always generally need one
partner. Bigger productions you would need more people. On one occasion I worked
with six people producing stuff all day which helped to lower the energy costs
which are so high for the natural gas that we used to fire the furnace. We use
electricity for the annealer.
Ask a New Yorker: What’s an Annealer?
Chris: The annealer is that box where the glass goes when it’s finished
because it has to be slowly cooled. If it were just to cool at room temputure
at regular speed it would just crack and explode. So we cool it slowly over
about twenty-four hrs.
Ask a New Yorker: Great. What’s the significance of the button on your
sweater?
Chris: Well there was a wad of hot glue stuck on my sweater and a friend of
mine two nights ago was telling me that she did not think it looked very good.
She thought it looked like boogers. She offered to give me this pin so I could
cover it up and not look like an idiot.
Contact: One Glass 718-486-9620
