_progress

Hi! I am a Dutch artist and aspiring scientific glassblower. My aim is to create kinetic glasswork. This digital space is my visual journal of progress 2020/2021.

There is a lot to be learned.
As Bernard Bolas describes in A Handbook of Laboratory Glass-Blowing “Until the student can turn a tube steadily without thinking about it, real progress in glassblowing is impossible”.

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August
2021

This month’s entry marks the end of my one-year learning process. I still feel very much like I’ve grasped only the tip of the iceberg of possibilities.

Which is exciting.

⛓⛓ speed x10

Creating these chains is quite monotonous work. Although it is good training to make each part in exactly the same proportions. I think in glass, there is no such thing as rushing through tedious work. Just sit down and accept it takes time.

6″ glass gear speed x25

Flame annealing’s kind of a misnomer. It’s more a way to gently let the temperatures fall below the strain point. Minimizing thermal shock, much the same way that you accomplish by a crockpot full of vermiculite, or a fiber blanket.

Now that I’m progressing into bigger parts, the risk of thermal shock increases. In the future, I will have to buy an anealing oven.

July
2021

June
2021

In June I was invited by Highlight Delft for a residency in the Student Hotel in Delft where I could continue to develop my skills in glass. Which meant moving my burner and workbench to the location of the Student Hotel. It was actually relatively easy to move my burner. Not surprising when you look at the itinerant historical character of glass blowing behind the burner. A good practice to keep refining and altering my work environment.

Distorted Gear Model#3 speed x25

24/7 window exhibition

During my residency at the Student Hotel, I experimented with glass gears. Deforming and pulling the gears out of proportion, and creating organic cylinder-shaped gears. These gears were showcased in a 24/7 window exhibit alongside my experiments with trapping and mixing different liquids and my blindly ambitious project to make a glass piston engine.

#LEAVING
THE BUILDING

Closing exhibition
residency Student
Hotel Delft.

May
2021

In May I was visited in my studio by my photographer Rosanne van Batenburg. She captured my process and workspace at that moment sublimely.

April
2021

March
2021

Using leftover scaffolding pipes of my extraction installation placed in a workbench clamp to bend glass rods into circles.

Februari
2021

Petals made by pressing hot glass against metal molds. Like the head of the burner, basically any available item I could get my hands on.

Januari
2021

Becoming better at making the same strings multiple times.

Some satisfying results filling the glass with expanding balls.

“Beginning with the Woodroffe Brothers in the 1850’s, it seems that no self-respecting troupe would appear without an engine … or two. … “ – Banhu Dunham, Contemporary Lampworking volume I.

Functional glass steam engines were the stars of the 19th-century itinerant glassworker show. The sense of miraculous leaps taken by the natural sciences and technology in the 19th century became enhanced by the beauty of the machines’ glass art.These dazzling devices fascinated the audience. They were both a feat of glass making and a method of demonstrating how steam power functioned.

Glass workers heavily promoted the engines in their advertisements and fanciful names like Fairy Queen, Excelsior, Columbia and the Crystal Gem. They held poetry competitions and presented prizes to the bard who submitted the best verse.

The Glass Steam Engine

The world in its wisdom, has long stood aghast,
Supposing each step in its progress the last,
But still ’tis advancing by steady degrees,
‘Till we ask in amazement, when will wonders cease?
When will wonders cease, we may justly enquire,
When we see a Glass Engine, complete and entire,
In fine working order, from boiler to beam,
And working away under full head of steam.
Mechanics, and artisans, here may engage,
To study this exquisite work of the age,
Surpassing all others in wonder and skill,
And as ages roll by, ’twill a wonder be still.
An Engine of Glass! why, that can never be,
E’en in this wond’rous age of the world’s history,
Incredulity starts, in most utter surprise,
We can hardly believe the plain sight of our eyes;
But there it now stands in its pearly array,
The greatest achievement of this latter day,
Its parts all adjusted, by magical skill,
With all the minutia of whistle and bell.
Its joints, and its gearings, are finished with care,
No friction occurs, and not even a jar;
And when the hot steam is sent coursing its veins,
Like a war horse it pants to break loose from the reins.
An engine, transparent, instructive, and new,
Like a real thing of life with its vitals in view,
The steam from the boilers sends life to the heart,
And life it goes bounding throughout every part.
Then, hail to the progress of science and skill,
From whose storehouse such wonders are forthcoming still;
The palm we will render with pleasure and hope,
To this scientific Bohemian Troupe

– William Somers