Blowing Glass

One of the crafts often associated with Okinawa is Ryukyu glass.  I’ve seen it in an array of colors, mostly bright and warm, with white speckled throughout or a textured quality to the glass.  The blues and greens are reminiscent of the ocean, and the reds, oranges and yellows capture sunset fairly well.  Near Nago, there is a place where you can blow your own piece of Ryukyu glassware.  There is a list of 2-3 items, several colors, and then 2-3 types of treatment, such as white speckles or outer texture or just plain Jane.  Ryan did this with some friends within his first month on island, and I always asked him to make a set of four tumblers.

After months of having only one tumbler satisfy the two of us, we went to Nago and made our own tumblers.  I didn’t much care for the green, so I chose a light blue, while Ryan tried the darker blue.  No need for artistic abilities here, because you have lots of help along the way.  First, you have to protect your forearms from the heat:

It was a hot day already, and the kilns in the warehouse make for an even warmer experience.  The gloves are 2-3 layers in total, so no worries about catching cold.

Next, you have to blow the hot glass into the form.  We chose tumblers, and the form for each of us was the same.  You are given a small white cone to keep the process as sanitary as possible, but it is pretty difficult to mess this part up:

The glass leaves the form and goes somewhere else while you are escorted to “the chair.”  This chair is not for comfort, but rather to keep you steady while working with the hot glass.  You are given a tool in your right hand and your left hand is expected to roll the rod upon which your glass is perched.  The goal here is to shape the tumbler.  The fantasy is that you will shape the tumbler so that it is a perfect cylinder from top to bottom, but very few of us who blow our own glass will achieve this.  Again, you have lots of help at this point, and you roll the rod and use the tool to shape the glass from the inside and the outside:

You are asked to come back the next day and pick up your glass, at which point you can see just how bad you were at keeping the sides straight!  I love our glasses.  They are a fine reminder of Okinawa, a fun day up north, and there isn’t a whole in the glass through which I might lose some of my adult beverage.

(I need to photograph the final product!  To be posted...)