By Maureen Drucker

When Museum visitors have watched a piece being made in the Hot Shop, they often wonder how soon it will be available in the Store. Unfortunately few know the time line. Most visitors do not know about the Cold Shop work required after a piece has come from the annealing oven.

Sitting in the Hot Shop, one does not realize that directly, behind it, but out of sight, is the Cold Shop. It is as much an integral component of glassblowing as is the annealer. Typically when a piece of blown glass is taken out of the annealing oven to the cold shop, the punty mark must be ground off with a lathe known as a punty grinder and then polished. Pieces may also require additional processes such as cutting, engraving, etching, grinding and sandblasting.

Every Wednesday and Friday in the state-of-the-art cold shop, you can find Conor McClellan working behind his protective gear, generating lots of noise and water in the process. Growing up in Lakewood and discovering glassblowing as a teenager, he has a special interest in these processes as well as in pursuing his own glassblowing.

A written overview of cold shop processes by Jason likens it to sanding wood, from a rough sharp surface with a very course silicon carbide grit, gradually moving to very fine by using a fine polishing compound. To flatten the vase of a piece, the flat grinding wheel is used. The final two polishing stages us the pumice and cerium wheels to bring the glass to a smooth polish. More information about the Cold Shop is available in the cabinet in the docent room.

The water-fed diamond-blade chop saw is used to cut glass, just like cutting Jello, but it is much noisier! Engraving the artists name and date ends the cold shop process.