It looks very complicated and very difficult, doesn't it?
Well, we have in the studio Jennifer Ross and her brother, Stephen,
to help us see the process of how these ornaments are made.
Welcome to the program, Jennifer. Thank you, Your Honour. And Stephen.
How long have you been doing this sort of thing, Jennifer?
Well, Honour, we released the craft and the art of glassblowing
by the Ross family in Australia about two years ago.
And prior to that, my brother and I trained for three years in all in Canada.
Under a very fine Hungarian or antique restaurator, if I could use that term.
And he was indeed a true craftsman.
So in all, we've been doing it just on five years.
Is it a very difficult process to learn?
It is, yes. The individual must have an eye for line.
They must have a flair for art.
Fortunately, I do art. I majored in art.
And my brother, Stephen, is also a goldsmith and a diamond setter.
So we're fortunate in that we have the artistic background.
Is it a very precise process? I mean, can you cover up a mistake?
Not really. No, not really.
We do have our accidents.
Generally, we find that when we are displaying,
if there's quite a hard breeze or a heavy breeze,
you have uneven cooling of glass and you have no control over that.
As I said, we do have our accidents, but really you can't afford to.
Not when you're handling glass.
No, because it really does look very, very delicate, especially the basket.
We'll talk about that later. Let's look at Stephen now.
What is Stephen doing?
Well, Stephen is preparing a length of tubing.
He's just starting to blow the body of a swan now.
As a matter of fact, I don't know whether it's going to be a head up or a head down,
but you see the body forming,
and Stephen uses the very modern method of the tubing,
plugging one end of the tube and the other part of the hose in his mouth.
So this is the body of the swan that has been formed.
He's now heating the lower part that is going to flatten the swan for it to stand.
How does he know when to stop?
Well, you just... You know.
Well, actually, the glasses that we wear, they're called didyidium glasses,
and these allow for us to cut through the glare of the torch, as you can see now.
Well, we don't have that same effect when we're wearing the glasses,
and you know by the colour of the glass when it's ready to take off the flame,
and you know when it's cooling, and you know by the feel of it in your hand as well.
Now Stephen is heating a couple of inches of the length of tubing,
and this is going to be part of the neck,
and you just have to keep heating that up and down, backwards and forwards,
until you get just the right temperature, and he's just pulling the neck now.
Again, you have to know how far to go, when to stop.
If you go too far, you're going to have a very thin-necked swan.
That's incredible.
The temperature is very important, aren't you, Stephen?
Yes, that's a very hot temperature.
The torches that we use are imported,
and it does allow us to have the heavy torch, the large flame,
for the big blowing like this,
and the finer torch that Stephen is now using to shape the head.
He's now going to shape the head, make it a little more rounded,
and then after that, pull the beak. He's pulling the beak now.
Oh!
It's fascinating, isn't it?
It is absolutely fascinating.
Just to watch it forming from a tube, yes.
They're really beautiful, aren't they?
Oh, they're very graceful.
What Stephen is doing now, he's marking the back of the swan.
These swans actually are very unique in that they are clear, as you can see,
but you can fill them.
You can change the colour of them to suit the decor in your home
by filling them with water and food colouring.
Stephen has just put the hole in the back of the swan
to allow the swan to be filled.
This is where you fill it.
People are really quite fascinated.
They can't work out how the fluid stays up in the head and the neck
without flopping and falling out of the hole.
Perhaps you could show us that.
What you do, you just place food colouring in the body of the swan
through the hole here
and fill the entire body up with liquid, just with clear water.
Place your thumb gently over the hole, turn it upside down
and let the liquid flow into the head and the neck.
Now, because the head down has a curve to make it a little more difficult,
just tilt the swan forward like so
and you'll see the liquid slowly work its way into the beak,
then the head, and then it finally fills up in the neck.
It's usually about three or four times and it does it.
This will probably be about the last.
There we are. So that's all you do.
And then you just rest it down
and the liquid will stay there until you empty it.
That's beautiful.
So you see it is quite unique because people very often change the decor
and sometimes it clashes.
And that blue one is again filled with blue water.
These blue swans are filled exactly the same and to complement it,
we make the centrepiece here.
I make the fibres of wheat and these, by the way, are flexible
to allow for transportation and also for cleaning.
And I also specialise in making the roses, the glass rose.
Could we talk about the wheat first? Because that's incredibly fine.
Yes, it is.
How exactly do you do that?
Well, you have to heat a certain area, an inch or so of the rod of glass here
and then you heat another length of glass you have in your right hand
to a certain degree, temperature, and then you place the glass here
and then knowing when to draw the glass up.
It looks like myro, doesn't it?
It does, yes. It's very fine but, as I said, flexible.
And this little, the bit down here is done first?
Yes, that's done first and then you draw it up from there.
Oh, I see, from there. Oh, I see.
And then the rose in the...?
Then the rose, yes. Well, that's quite a lengthy process.
All of the petals naturally are placed individually.
And how about the colouring of that?
The colouring, we use a special glass tint
so we can virtually have any colour that we like.
Well, we'll be back with more about these beautiful ornaments after this break.
We're back with the making of our glass ornaments
and at the moment Jennifer is in the process of making one
and we'll see exactly what it is later on.
And now I have Stephen with me who's going to explain
a little bit about the ornaments we have in front of us.
How about this one first of all, Stephen?
Well, that one's Mickey Mouse.
I thought I'd make one of those today
and we actually made those for Moomba
and I usually make them a little bit larger
but I didn't have much time today to complete that one.
Well, he is complete but he's a little bit smaller than what I usually make.
How long did it take you to make it?
Well, he took about five minutes
but usually the larger ones take around about 15 to 25 minutes to make.
And how about this? This is fascinating.
This ship in the bottle. It's really beautiful.
How do you get the ship in the bottle?
Well, that's only a little secret.
What we do is make the ship first
and I use some tubing and pull the neck of the bottle
and slide the ship in, seal the ship to the base of the tubing
and then close the back up.
And then I make the little stopper at a later date.
And how long would it take you to make something like that?
Well, that one would take a couple of hours to make.
Well, that's not really very long, is it?
Well, that's sitting down.
It looks like this is...
For two hours working so I can't really put it down
like Jennifer was saying before about uneven cooling.
You've got to keep on working at it and then anneal it.
Anealing means you've got to raise the temperature all over the glass
and let it cool down evenly.
So you can't sort of stop and leave it and go back again.
Just looking at Jennifer there, do you ever burn your fingers?
Well, a couple of years ago in Canada I burnt my hand.
The torches blew up, the pressure hose came off
and Jennifer has burnt herself quite a few times, like burnt fingernails.
You see your fingers go up in flames a couple of times a day.
It isn't the sort of thing that children should experiment with at home
by the gas stove or anything like that.
It's got to be professionally done like anything else like this.
And what about this one? This one looks very...
Well, that's a little...
I'll touch it in case it burns.
They're wedding cake decorations, which the brides or the caterers
or the mothers could put on the wedding cake.
After the wedding they could be taken off
and put up on the mantelpiece at home in the bride's home.
Also there's another little one here, it's got a little bow on top
for the Feral Love birds.
Oh, yes.
That's one of the new designs Jennifer's been working on
for the last few months.
And...
Is this all created all in one or are the birds attached afterwards?
Well, Jennifer starts off by making the base
and then the little fountain section here.
And then she brings up the top here, like the canopy,
and the birds go on next, then the bow.
And then it could take up to about ten minutes to anneal that,
bringing the temperature up evenly again.
So the birds are actually attached afterwards?
Yeah, they're made separately, yeah.
Oh, I see.
And they're fused on and everything really is very strongly made.
And how about this one here at the end?
Well, that's a joint effort, that one.
We make those...
I make the base and the arch,
and Jennifer puts the little leaves and the petals on,
and also she makes the little birds hanging on the stand there.
Being so careful.
Is the glass very strong?
Well, this is Pyrex glass.
The original name would be borosilicate glass.
We've used a lot of different types of glass,
and we find that this sort of glass is the strongest and the best.
Does it ever break while you're doing it,
or I suppose that's just the temperatures?
Well, the only time it would break is if we dropped something on the bench.
But no, not really, not if we're careful.
Sometimes if we haven't annealed it, it can explode on the bench.
We didn't really talk much about the colouring.
How do we get the colouring in there?
Well, that's glass stain.
It's a special sort of a tint, mainly used on glass.
We import that and we brush that on,
and we can get all various colours,
and the same with the blue ones here and the red one down the end there.
Well, how's Jennifer doing?
How are we going, Jennifer?
I'm good and you're on it.
I'm good and you're on it.
Is it nearly completed?
Nearly.
I was just about to put the little top on.
You do also, you and Jennifer, have demonstrations at local shopping centres, don't you?
At the moment we're at Northland Shopping Centre.
We should be there for about another two and a half weeks,
and then after that we're going along to Southland Shopping Centre.
We'll be there for approximately four weeks.
Do you go interstate at all?
No.
No, you don't.
Well, people can look in their local papers anyway and see when you're on.
Well, Jennifer, let's have a look at that
and also at the finished product of what you were actually making.
Well, this is three quarters completed, actually.
The wishing well with the little glass-lazed canopy.
I have yet to make the bucket to hang in the centre there
and also a pair of lovebirds on top, which I haven't got around to doing yet.
But at least what I was doing then was doing the woven glass,
which is the canopy part, so possibly people saw what happened.
And that's the finished article.
This is what it will be like when I've completed it.
Well, that's very beautiful.
Thank you very much, both of you, for coming in and showing us.
That was really fantastic.
Thank you very much.
David presents another career opportunity, that of air hostessing.
Next on this week has seven days.