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Glass
Blowing
Around
200 BC Syrian craftsmen discovered that they could blow
thin-walled vessels of glass from a hollow iron pipe.
A simple yet miraculous tool that has served us profoundly
and continuously, the blowpipe has been adapted to various
scales but changed very little. In making a glass architecture
in situ, blowing will be the tool that delicately draws
walls, columns and domes up from the molten ground line
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Opening |
reheating |
Spinning |
(Diderot, Encyclopedie,
1762-1777: 13 - 14) |
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The sequence
of cranes shown above carry out the traditional operations of glass
blowing at a larger scale and on site. A cavern is melted within the
earth, the caverns are used as crucibles for glass blowing, in this
case dish like roof canopy elements are spun out like plates and set
on top of hollow glass columns to collect rain water in the cisterns
below. |
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Thin single
or double walled( with insulating air space), shell structures
could be blown in one generous breath, from molten foundations
in a matter of minutes. |
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