Once you get a peek into the world of glassware artisans, it’s almost amazing to watch the combination of skill and artistry that comes with the age old techniques that are still used to make art glass and glassware today.  Who better than the Corning Glassware Museum to give a demonstration of the skills and techniques used to create blown glass and art glass.

Not too bad a product, when you realize that glass is largely made from sand (or rather silica).  According to Wikipedia…

“The history of creating glass can be traced back to 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia.^[1] The term glass developed in the late Roman Empire. It was in the Roman glassmaking center at Trier, now in modern Germany, that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from a Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance”

All I can say, that meals, and the beverages we consume, at meals are made more elegant and beautiful with the addition of glassware. And what other objects can be made from glass?  Objects made out of glass include not only traditional objects such as vessels (bowls, vases, bottles, and other containers), paperweights, marbles, beads, but an endless range of sculpture and installation art as well.