Judy P's Tickle Trunk

The Glasshouse of the Jamestown settlement is not to be confused with the glass house of “he who lives in glass house should not throw stones.” It is a huge wooden barn of a building with a few smaller windows and lots of doors. Indeed, the side come right out of ‘er which I am sure is necessary as I imagine it gets mighty hot in there in the summertime.

I wonder if they made their own glass for this Glasshouse window.

The glasshouse was built in 1608 in the very early days of the Jamestown settlement. German and Polish glassblowers were brought in but the venture failed after only two years of operation, likely due to the overall hard times felt during the “starving time”. It was a pretty labour intensive operation to be running on an empty stomach what with most of the efforts going into gathering the supplies for the glass and cutting the wood to burn in the furnaces. It was revived again in 1623 but again didn’t last, this time likely because of a stretch of bad weather, the Indian Massacre and illness. It didn’t see the light of day again until it was rebuilt in the 1970’s on a much larger scale than the original of course. The remains of the old fire-pits and furnaces are on display in a smaller exhibit next to the glasshouse. I could have stood there all day and watched this fellow blow glass. He is using techniques and materials similar to the original except that the much larger furnace is now run on natural gas and they buy their raw materials instead of gathering them.

A glob of molten glass is removed from the furnace on a hollow metal rod. White hot in there, well over 1000 degrees.

The glass is rolled back and forth on a metal plate to give it a uniform shape. The little vase in the foreground is what he is making and the actual colour of the glass once it has cooled.

The glass has cooled to an orange glow but is still soft and malleable. Here the glassmith is shaping the neck of the vase.

It was mighty hard to exit through the gift shop without buying something but we are traveling for months and the jack-in-the-pulpit vase I really wanted was just not practical to transport. I will just have to be happy with the memories and the photos (I bet I will have to repeat that statement over and over on my coming adventures). Now what I really want to know is, who is that lady photo-bombing my picture of the blue vases? Or is it really a ghost of glassblowers long past?

Sand for the glass was collected at the beach where I found these large tracks. I thought they looked like bobcat but perhaps they are just of a dog with the nail marks eroded.

Identify the tracks and win yourself this super-sized Virginia pinecone:

Click on any photo for a larger view.

© Judy Parsons 2014