To get ready to make additional seeds for the ongoing nut and seed project it is necessary to try out different glass colour batches, blow them out and see how different colours react with each other. It takes trial and error and educated judgments to find those glass colours that work best to make life like blown glass seeds and glass nuts.
THIS acorn is now SOLD. Jason can make more. We welcome your custom orders. Please use the contact tab to let us know that you would like your own glass acorn (s). Blown acorns as well as solid acorns are available.
Jason Stropko creating a special order, extra large, blown clear glass acorn.. The small ones are usually solid glass and weigh about what a good paperweight does. All size acorns are available well in time for the Thanksgiving Winter season, we strive to complete your orders at the first opportunity. If we have a lot of work in the studio we will try and fit acorns between other production items. We know your order is special to you and it is to us, too. If you have a deadline by which you need any custom made pieces then please give us a call or send us a message before placing your order. We always try our best but it is still best to check in.
Prices for all acorns vary depending on size. For current pricing please check our shop or use the contact tab on our website.
(Limited acorns are available for $– please check current prices on our website shop or send us a message. Our prices have changed as our business grew since 2015.)
Also worth noting is that we do continue to have occasional seconds sales of pieces that are beautiful but have small irregularities – perhaps a small air bubble or a slightly unintended shape. As the years have gone on we have less seconds these days than we did 7 years ago but it’s worth asking us about seconds if you love what Jason Stropko creates but need a more wallet friendly option.
All our glass is, yes the seconds, too, is tactile, beautiful and daydream invoking but may contain a small defect, which can be that the size doesn’t match it’s brothers and sisters or that it’s cap sits a little differently or it may have caught an unintended dent. Still a beautiful heirloom piece with a character all of it’s own)
Glassmaker and Artist Evan Kolker at work in Glow Glass Studio in Oakland, working on a pitcher plant, September 2015. This is very technical work requiring years of glass working experience. Evan is regularly assisted by Jason Stropko and sometimes assists with Jason’s projects, too. There are some things that are very difficult if not impossible to create without having a competent assistant who also has a thorough understanding of how glass works.
This handblown glass bowl takes a total of 26 hours to create. There are 2 separate hot glass blowing processes used, each requiring a 12 hour annealing (precise temperature controlled cooling) and a cold worked engraving process, which takes another craftsman up to an hour for each bowl.
The making of these bowls requires a high level of competent glassmaking craftsmanship, something that Jason has dedicated himself to full time for the past 12 years..
… this is where if you were new to glassmaking you would learn about the fact that once in a while each ceramic melting pot, sitting inside the furnace, will develop a crack, due to erosion and unforeseeable factors.. Once the crack deepens it either causes molten glass to leak or an effect takes place that is best described as ‘cords’ developing in the glass, which float on top of the molten glass and can appear in the blown glass pieces as raised cord like areas.. This is rendering the molten glass a lower quality and hence creating an unworkable situation.
This is when it is time to face the challenge and begin a 10 day process of cooling the furnace and molten glass slowly (several days), changing the ceramic crucible (ceramic pot that holds the molten glass) and bringing the furnace and a new batch of glass back up to temperature. The entire process takes somewhere around 10 days.
Of course this can throw a real spanner in the works when multiple glassmakers all booked time to create glassworks, when students lined the doors to take classes… We got lucky and Jason is able to continue teaching his glassblowing classes at Glass Hand Studio, a Glass studio on the lovely island (which originally was a peninsula) Alameda, just down the road from Oakland. Jason had met the owner Prax recently at a Jeff Mack, goblet making workshop that Jason assisted at. We are really happy that Prax can host Jason’s classes!
Jason just received a whole batch of bookings for glassblowing classes through #Verlocal and we are pretty excited about meeting these new students who will be coming for individual short sessions. The first few classes will be at Glass Hand Studio in Alameda before we relocate back to Glow Glass, where Jason usually works with fellow glassmakers, creates his own glass and teaches…
#BayAreaGlass
spending the day developing project ideas and making more of the blown glass table set items.. drinking glasses, bowls and functional vessels will be ready soon!
The process benefits tremendously from teamwork. Good communication, a sense of humour a steady hand and years of skill are all requires from both the gaffer (Jason) and his assistant; today Evan Kolker who is an incredible glassmaker, on other days Jason assist him in the making of his intricate and highly technical skill requiring glass art objects! It is a real stroke of luck that Jason found this glassmakers community. Where many colleagues also have very high skills levels. There is also Alex Abajian, the studio owner and another outstanding glassmaker. A series of glassmakers rent the studio and there are a lot of fantastic projects happening here. You wouldn’t know what you are missing until you see what these people make out of molten glass..
these are the tools of the day…
#teamwork #jasonstropko #glassblowing #glowglassstudio #glass
Yesterday Jason assisted Jess Wainer creating her beautiful luminescent large glass lampshades for a client commission. In the light these shades virtually glow and diffract colour into these gorgeous washes of green, yellow, red.. When not hit by direct sunlight the shades are a warm golden honey yellow with a whitish fog over towards the rim.
The picture shows Jess’s work straight from out of the annealer after their overnight controlled cooling process; before the items are cold worked and finished, hopefully we can show her final pieces, too.
Each lampshade will sell for $1000, 3 were ordered.
A very special drinking glass, a style of which not many exist anywhere (because it requires time consuming multiple work steps to great and there is no other way of creating it..)
The process is called battuto. The glass is first blown into a mould to create ripple lines, blown a little thicker than usual. Then annealed overnight. Then the glass is ground with special glass grinding wheels, a process that in total take around 2 hours in the hands on making + the annealing time. THEN the glass is hot torched to soften the ground glass edges and sandy appearance. Then the glass is once more annealed and finally examined to check if the desired affect was achieved.
The total time worked and equipment used accounts for the uniqueness and price of this luxury, special occasion item! We are thinking about developing a full table set of these battuto glasses to offer at gallery price to the right person.
A day at the Glass Studio, Alex throw kerosene into the furnace to create fine bubbles in the glass for a glass commission project.
Jason Stropko Glass 