CIMG2952 Glassmaker at Skansen takes glass out of the furnace

Glassmaker at Skansen takes glass out of the furnace

CIMG2952 Glassmaker at Skansen takes glass out of the furnace

CIMG2952 Glassmaker at Skansen takes glass out of the furnace

The Skansen open-air museum in Stockholm is kind of like a historic theme park that shows how life in Sweden looked before the historical era. It has craftspeople who give demos of old-time crafts, such as glass-blowing. My friend and I visited the glassblower’s workshop and took pictures there.

In the back of the glassmaker’s workshop there is a furnace where he heats the glass at the end of the long pipe that he’s holding. Then he briefly blows into that pipe, and then stands at the grey metal partition (seen in the previous and next pictures) — I don’t know what it’s properly called — and shapes the glass with metal tongs. That’s my very inept description of the process, the best I could come up with without knowing the proper terms for all the tools, etc.

Here is a video. In that video, after shaping the glass with tongs, he puts it back in the furnace. After that, he repeats the process with the tongs.

Skansen, Stockholm, Sweden, May 2006