Ready for Santa or ready for storage? You decide..
These are now the final 2 weeks before Jason travels to Germany to visit the Christmas Markets!
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These are now the final 2 weeks of the year in which you can take a glassblowing class with Jason or purchase a blown glass ornament or a set of 12, whichever your tree and life and stockings to fill require. Acorns are ready to be displayed under your tree or on the table, chestnuts, pomegranate seeds and sunflower seeds, vessels with lid and without, exquisite work and daily tableware..
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Write or call THIS week if you still need a handful of ornaments.
Many glass objects of desire will soon be packed up… but will they be delivered by Santa or carefully stored in storage?
Saturday 5th December @ Jason’s Tai Chi Studio only ! Call Jason for details 510 375 8487.
A range of nuts and seeds that will look just perfect in windows displays, as part of table arrangements, nestled among gifts under the Christmas tree, in your bowl of ready to be cracked walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds..
Batutto : ‘carved’ glass. Blown and ‘carved’ by Jason Stropko
Such a rare opportunity to touch and drink from such a unique glass. I didn’t know that this kind of glass even existed, it’s not exactly what you find in Ikea or even more upmarket home interior stores.
A completely handmade glass: blown by hand. Recently Jason had a mould custom made from a drinking glass that he created. He uses the mould to make the drinking glass creation process more streamlined and the products more easily reproducible. Each drinking glass is still finished by hand, this is not the same as a completely mould blown process where the tops are ‘popped’, instead this mould acts as the guide to the final shape, which then has room to vary slightly, giving the lovely handmade feeling.
This particular drinking glass was blown very thick and sturdy to allow plenty of room to battuto it. What is battuto? It is effectively carving of the glass, or rather grinding it with a glass grinding disk against which the glass is pressed to grind each facet that you see.
A single glass takes a good 90 minutes to battuto (this one actually took 2 hours!). But first it needs to be blown, for which it is really quite useful to have an assistant who can open and close the blow mould (it operates with a hinge and is tricky for the glassmaker to use alone unless he/she is an octopus).. After the glass is blown it enters the annealer, which is effectively a slow cooling down oven. The glass will idle in the annealer overnight on a long cooling cycle. This is essential or else the glass would be prone to cracking when it is knocked slightly, or it could just spontaneously combust, too.
Nobody wants a combusting drinking glass, right? After the glass has cooled down it then goes through the battuto process after which it is hot torched to soften sharp edges. And this is where I am not sure if it will be annealed once more..
You can imagine how rare such a battuto drinking glass is, but it also is a very old and traditional technique. If you ever are in need of a present that nobody else will bring to a favourite family members wedding or super special occasion then you now have an idea…
I just found this great link to A Murano website that explains Battuto better than I.
Jason Stropko’s Aquatic Safari vase & lampshade (you choose, which)
Trying to catch up with documenting all of the many, many glass objects that are populating the studio.. Hopefully this vase / lampshade will find a new home, soon!
Beautiful vase / lampshade : made by Jason Stropko
Sorry there have been so few personal words lately, it’s been a busy time getting geared up for the seasonal occasions as well as Jason starting a new part time glassblowing job with fixed hours. They threw a party the first day that he worked! What a welcome that was!
Jason has been working for other people’s glass dreams in the last 3-4 weeks and not created as much as we would have liked from his own projects. Slowly but surely he is continuing his own line of tableware and Nuts & Seeds projects.
.. the acorn is shown photographed from the same angle but with slight changes in the light direction..
This particular acorn is currently unique in Jason’s collection because of the way that the acorn cap was created. Every time Jason is in the studio we try and experiment with one thing so expand the overall range. We haven’t made more of this one yet, so in case you love it: it is here and has no twins and might never have any, but it fits really well with all the other acorns and nuts and seeds…
Yes, sorry, I am getting a little bit ‘salesy’, its coming up to that time of year and Jason is coming to spend Christmas in Germany & England, he might depart as early as December 15th, so we are ‘laying our eggs’, ready to hatch as early as we can this year..
We imagine these seeds to look just fantastic in window displays, on table settings, anywhere where light reflects, at Thanksgiving dinner tables or displays. The symbolism of acorns is reflective of the symbolism of Oak trees, their strength and the characteristics of prosperity and wisdom. Seeds in general are great symbolic gifts for anybody who is planting seeds in life, starting something new, beginning a journey of education, career or health… Glass like this acorn is a really good gift idea for minimalists as well as those people who love to populate their home with treasures and objects of desire..
We will upload more pictures of acorns in the coming weeks. Keep your eyes on Jason’s blog.
Just make sure to play your friends & family card and don’t forget to flutter eyelashes (that goes for both male and female friends, as there we have one male and one female running this glass adventure – flutterings always welcome)
It is just important that we post life sustaining prices for those people who are not (yet) our friends and family. Because who would want to get stuck living in an RV motorhome, right?
Jason Stropko presents some of the ‘Tactile tableware’ set that is in development… First pieces are available already.. Several items are ready to be shipped and others can be made to commission within 7-10 days. (quicker turnaround time of as fast as 48 hours is sometime possible)
Tactile twisted ripple effect table ware set, blown glass, made by Jason Stropko
Orders are welcome for pieces to be made in good time for Christmas gift-giving season… and it will be best if you can let Jason know by November 20th, this will allow lots of time to pay close attention to detail.
tactile twisted ripple effect : dessert bowls by Jason Stropko
Below a few very short videos to show part of the process. Photographs of the finished pieces are coming soon, too…
We received final details of an order for drinking glasses a couple of days ago and Jason got into the studio to make each glass specific to the colours, shape design choice and sizes requested.
optic mould :
shaping:
blow mould (error in labelling that says optic mould, but it is a blow mould)
We agree, it feels like it is just a little bit too soon to say those words, but knowing how time can fly and how making glass to meet orders can take a little time we decided to join the and shops that already play Christmas Music, except we aren’t playing the music (just yet), we will wait until December before we do that!
Jason blowing a huge clear glass bubble…
Just playing around making a large clear glass bauble, thinking about larger than life christmas ornaments made in glass! These will only be made by special order and cost from around $95 for a clear/transparent colour and around $125 for an optic mould blown one.. Orders should ideally be received during the month of November. It will be possible to make some in December, too. But the sooner you dream up your christmas ornaments colour choices and designs the sooner they can be in production!
an idea for possible Christmas ornament designs..
But here an early offering of: place your order early and be guaranteed a timely delivery (in good time to send gifts as ornaments to friends around the world even!)
The colour of this small vase / decanter is called tea. Personally we think it also reminds us of smoky rose or smoky salmon. In the background are visible some flamingo coloured drinking glasses. Jason has prepared a really nice description for this post but I couldn’t decipher his writing …
Jason Stropko’s tableware includes this small water decanter that also works really nicely for a small wine decanter as well as a small vase
Any item in your imagination is of course available in any of the colours that you see on Jason’s online profile. He will be happy to make items to commission, please ask if you have an idea. It’s not a distraction to work with you, it’s what we are here for.
Jason Stropko Glass 