A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF A LONG PROCESS TRUE LOVE SOUL MATE

The manufacture of glass is simple and difficult at the same time. Simple because you need only a few ingredients: sand, soda and lime. Plus energy. Then it starts to become difficult, especially if you want to have colored glass. Then you need metal oxides in fine quantities. Many questions must be answered before you start the process. What's the melting temperature of this kind of glass? Up to 1,450 degrees Centigrade. Every 500 kilograms of the batch are molten in separate earthen pots. It takes about 12 hours to get homogeneous molten glass, liquid like honey. After that the glass needs to rest for a couple of hours before the glass masters show up. They are strong and skilled workers. At 4 o'clock in the morning they take the first amount of glass out of the furnace. With a 2-meter long blowpipe they gather the glass the shape of the fist of a strong man. Turning, turning, turning the blowpipe the glass cools down a little bit until it is ready to add the next portion. Working temperature in the furnace is now 1,100 degrees C. The ball is now really heavy. The blowpipe is getting hot. It must be cooled with water without stopping to turn the blowpipe. Before the real blow process starts the glass must be reheated in the furnace. Then the glass masters blows his breath into the ball of hot glass. The ball grows to a balloon. No, it is more the shape of a teardrop. By blowing in more of his breath the bubble is getting bigger. It is difficult to keep the shape. It is incredible hot only an arm length away from the furnace. And the glass at the head of the blowpipe is heavy. To fix the breath of the glass master - the moving, twisting lines like exhaling on a cold winter day in Istanbul - we add small parts of cold opal (white) glass to the glowing red clear glass. Glass parts laying on a heavy steel plate the glass master rolls the ball over the opal small cullets. Dips single pieces. In his imagination he knows how the final result will look like. Everything is reheated in a small oven at 1,200 degrees. The white particles start to move to flow like feathers on the clear glass. That is what the artist wants. To catch the moment. To freeze it. To keep it for eternity. When the glass cools down the glass master knocks off the glass object from the blowpipe. Smoothly it is carried to the annealing lehr. Step by step the temperature goes down from 850 degrees to room temperature. Beautiful mouth blown glass made especially for the artwork of Ebru. Unique. Precious. Rare. With the breath of the World's best glassmakers.

Hans Reiner Meindl