Vitrea
A hot-glass studio. One series a year.
Everything else is practice — and you can join the practice.
≈ 1040 °C the gather
It starts as honey
that can kill you.
Every piece we make begins the same way: a steel pipe turned twice through the crucible, pulling up a gather of molten soda-lime the colour of a struck match. From that second on, the clock runs. Glass does not wait, does not forgive, and does not care how long you have been doing this.
Vitrea is four benches, two furnaces, and a rule we have kept since 2014 — one series a year. Twelve vessels, one batch, one colour chemistry. The rest of the calendar belongs to teaching, and to the two thousand tumblers our students have blown, dropped, and occasionally finished.
900 – 650 °C the bench
Five tools, none of them
changed in 400 years.
Hover each tool — or tab to it — to see what it does. Every demo is drawn in code, because the real thing is too hot to photograph up close.
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Jacks
Spring-steel tongs that pinch the neck line — the crease where the piece will later crack cleanly off the pipe.
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Block
A cherry-wood cup kept underwater between uses. It shapes the gather on a cushion of its own steam, charring a little every time.
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Punty
A solid rod tipped with hot glass, stuck to the base so the piece can leave the blowpipe and have its lip opened.
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Marver
A cold steel table. Rolling hot glass across it chills a skin onto the surface — the difference between a form and a puddle.
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Glory hole
The reheating furnace. Thirty seconds in its mouth buys you thirty seconds of shaping — the whole craft is that exchange.
≈ 700 °C the breath
Three of the twelve Undertow profiles, inflating as you pass — the same second of breath, drawn as a curve instead of filmed.
510 → 60 °C the anneal
Cooling is the slowest thing
we do on purpose.
Glass that cools too fast keeps the stress locked inside and shatters days later, on a shelf, for no reason anyone can see. So every vessel spends four days in the annealer walking down this exact curve. This page cools the same way — look at the ticker.
20 °C the cold shop
Series № XII — Undertow
Twelve vessels from a single February batch: soda-lime charged with 0.8% copper, the blue-green of water that has just closed over your head. Blown over nine days, cooled over four, sold once — we keep no seconds and reopen no series.
- IUndertow, closed lip41 cmplaced — private, Boston
- IIUndertow, rolled lip36 cmplaced — Heller Gallery
- IVUndertow, waisted33 cmon hold
- VIIUndertow, low bowl18 × 39 cmavailable
- IXUndertow, tall neck47 cmavailable
- XIIUndertow, seed-bubble field29 cmstudio collection
Gallery and collection enquiries: gallery@vitrea.glass. Viewings by appointment, Thursday to Sunday.
20 °C, until you light up bench sessions
Now it’s your turn
at the pipe.
Every session is taught at the bench, one student to one gaffer, in the same heat the series is made in. You will burn a block, lose a piece to the floor, and take home something you blew with your own breath. That is the syllabus.
Benches run Thursday–Sunday. Closed-toe shoes, natural fibres, hair tied back. Sixteen and up; under-eighteens bring an adult who is willing to also blow glass, because they always end up wanting to.