French Mouth-Blown Glass Vase
French Mouth-Blown Glass Vase
Description & Details
Add elegance and character to your home with this unique mouth-blown glass vase. Its beautiful lines and gorgeous smooth finish is achieved thanks to an intricate mouth blowing procedure. It is entirely handmade by glass blowers in France, who use traditional tools and processes, resulting in one-of-a-kind, superior quality glassware. La Soufflerie is a family-run studio founded in 2007 by husband-and-wife-team Sebastian and Valentina Nobile, who have built an association of glass blowers to revive ancestral techniques of glass blowing.
Composition & Colour
Made from 100% recycled glass.
Size
16cm (height) x 15cm (diameter)
Care
Clean it by hand or in the dishwasher.
Ideas for Use
Use it as a fishbowl or fill it with sand and shells from your last vacation – or use it as a classic vase.
How it is made
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An atelier in the heart of Paris
Tucked away in a small courtyard in Paris’ XV arrondissement, the team from la Soufflerie promotes the ancient tradition of glassblowing, which is craft dating back to the 2nd millennium BC.
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Recycling Glass
La Soufflerie strongly believes not only in preserving the art of glassblowing and its related know-how but also our planet. To this end, la Soufflerie only works with used glass and recycles it. When they want to create different colours, they add pigmented glass to the mix, which means that the glass itself is coloured instead of painted and no changes to the colour can occur over time.
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The Furnace
It is used to heat glass at extremely high temperatures. It contains three chambers: the first with the highest temperature is to melt the glass at around 1320°C, the second is used to reheat a piece in between steps of working it and the third is to slowly cool the glass.
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Blowing the Glass
After the glass is melted and gathered onto the end of a blowpipe – in much the same way that honey is picked up on a honey dipper – the craftsmen blow air through the pipe into the glass, creating a bubble. La Soufflerie’s skilled craftsmen are capable of shaping almost any vessel forms by rotating the pipe, swinging it and controlling the temperature of the piece while they blow.
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Reheating and Shaping the Glass
During the glass blowing, the craftsmen can gather more glass over that bubble to create a larger piece. To heat and reheat the glass to give it its intended shape, they use the glory hole, a small opening in the furnace that provides enough heat to keep the glass between 870 and 1 040°C.
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Hardening the Glass
Once the creation is done, it is placed back into the third chamber of the furnace to slowly cool it between 371 and 482°C over a period of a few hours to a few days, depending on the size of the pieces. This step is crucial, as it keeps the glass from cracking or shattering, making it resistant and durable.
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