Hurray. I won. Hey wait. What on earth am I going to do with this thing? I couldn’t turn down a prize. So look out, somebody is going to be the lucky recipient of my freebee corning original!
We went to the Corning Glass Museum. It is a pretty cool place. One floor is all about technology related to making glass from the earliest historical records to modern day. They describe all the process to anneal, make shatter resistant, color it, make it thermally more stable, and make fiber optics, lenses and lots of ornamental stuff. They demo processes too. That’s where the winning come in. We watched a glass blowing demonstration. They make bowls most of the time so guess what they have lots off. Right, imperfect bowls made by the junior trades people that they draft into these demo sessions. It was wonderful to watch the process and in the end they drew my raffle ticket number. I won a lovely, though slightly wobbly, glass bowl.
In other demos, we watched a young lady use just a blow torch to transform borosilicate rod into an adorable penguin and were impressed by the demonstration of how different types of glass break.
We could have spent hours longer in their museum section that had exhibits from Egyptian molded glass objects de art to modern art pieces. It was a pretty day though and we wanted to get outdoors. Maybe we will stop in again some time.
Fun facts:
When they say they float glass to make sheet that’s what they really mean. They float melted glass on a bath of molten tin and it levels to a sheet.
Early pane glass was either cut from a spun platter (that’s the glass that is thicker on one edge) or a blown cylinder (it had to be reheated and flattened).
Making glass paperweights can be a very intricate process. The large collection on display at the museum includes a 100 lb+ “earth” paperweight that has magnificent detail.
