Portrait of a Scientific Glassblower

Craft & Design Science

Here’s a skill I always wanted to learn. The chemistry program at my alma mater still actually includes glassblowing classes, but they are pretty perfunctory. Doing it right takes considerable practice, in my experience. And if you want to make apparatus, as I recall, you need access to an annealing oven. Etsy created this video portrait of their seller Kiva Ford, who makes both scientific and art glassware. [via Boing Boing]

2 thoughts on “Portrait of a Scientific Glassblower

  1. migpics says:

    I don’t think you need an annealing oven for pyrex as it doesn’t occur the same amount of stress when cooling as regular glass does.
    Small pieces can be annealed on a table or by flashing the pieces over the flame.
    A friend of mine Andy Paiko works with functioning glass. Here he’s created a working spinning wheel out of glass.
    http://andypaikoglass.com/sculpture/the_spinning_wheel/
    Here’s the video.

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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