@LITTLETON/VOGEL 2 (2000), BY CLAY JOHANSON
CREATED WITH CONSIDERABLE ASSISTANCE FROM JOHN LITTLETON, BAKERSVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, AUGUST 2000
HAND-BLOWN GLASS, 5 1/2" ACROSS
After my first attempt at glassblowing (@Littleton/Vogel 1), John Littleton suggested something a little more ambitious for my second attempt: a bowl. This would involve the use of a blowpipe, rather than just a plain old solid pipe. I said, "Sure, let's try it!"

As before, we laid out some blue frit on the marver. Since blowing glass is harder than just working with it, John performed all of the gathers for this work... once the gather was the right size, I created a bubble in the glass by blowing into the pipe. This was the beginning of the bowl. We added color to the work by rolling the work through the frit on the marver, and then added another gather of clear glass.

The problem at this point was that the opening into the bubble was attached to the blowpipe. So, while I kept the work rotating, John took a solid pipe, added a small gather to it, and created what is called a punty. With both pipes rotating, John attached the punty to the bottom of the work. I used the jacks to score the glass connected to the blowpipe... then all it took was a tap on the blowpipe to detach it from the bubble, which was now connected to the punty.

To create the bowl shape, I used jacks to steadily widen the opening of the bubble. I also used wooden paddles to try to straighten out the outer surface of the bubble. (As you can see, I was not entirely successful!) A few reheats in the glory hole were necessary to complete all of the working with the glass. When we were done, I used the jacks to score the glass connection to the punty, tapped the punty, and the glass fell into John's gloved hands. A quick trip to the annealing oven, and the bowl was complete!

The end result of this is pretty good for a beginner... in particular, I really like the shadow cast by this work. Needless to say, this work probably wouldn't look anything like this without John's expert assistance. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to create this work of art.

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