Little and Hip: Magnor Glassverk

Our first stop on our bobil-journey was Magnor Glassverk.

Milla made a magnificent drawing - all by herself - whilst waiting for the glassblowing to happen. Can you see what it says? 'Estralu'... She said: 'look, I'm from 'Australia'! That's right, she spelled 'Australia' in a very adelaidian dialect :-)

Magnor Glassverk is a glass workshop in the deep forests in-between Oslo and Sweden. Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble, or parison, with the aid of a blowpipe, or blow tube. A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer - and that is what we were for a day, when we tried glassblowing for the first time at Magnor.

Glassblowing is a glass forming technique which was invented by the Phoenicians around 50 BC somewhere along the Syro-Palestinian coast. The earliest evidence of glassblowing comes from a collection of waste from a glass shop, including fragments of glass tubes, glass rods and tiny blown bottles, which was dumped in a mikvah, a ritual bath in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, dated from 37 to 4 BC. The invention of glassblowing coincided with the establishment of the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC which served to provide motivation to its spread and dominance - and even into the woods of Norway. The process of glassblowing is HOT! The transformation of raw materials into glass takes place around 1,320 °C; the glass emits enough heat to appear almost white hot. The glass is then left to "fine out" (allowing the bubbles to rise out of the mass), and then the working temperature is reduced in the furnace to around 1,090 °C. At this stage, the glass appears to be a bright orange color. Have a look at Agnes's glass-bulb - bright orange! Amazing temperatures!!!