On the Floor: Finishing Touches
Photo by Chelsea Tornga Photography.
By Kristin Elliot, Coldworker
A large part of what makes Museum of Glass such a special place is the people who work here. As anyone who has visited MOG knows, one of the most dynamic parts of the guest experience is the live glassblowing demonstrated daily in the Hot Shop. The MOG Hot Shop Team is one of the most visible and tightly knit departments in the Museum. Their daily displays of talent and technique invite audience members to witness the fascinating process of glassblowing and gain insight into how the works of art in MOG’s galleries have come into being.
After more than eight years at Museum of Glass, I can still say I am in awe of the place that I get to call work, and that I continue to be inspired by the people with which I get to collaborate every day. The Hot Shop Team here at MOG are some of the most talented, diversely skilled people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and I think the combination of our team’s passion for ever growing knowledge of the material, trust in each other, and love for our community are some of the main reasons why MOG continues to be a staple – not only in Tacoma, but as a prestigious glass institution known around the world. Working on this team has not only reaffirmed my love of glass and made me a better coldworker but has also made me realize that one of my favorite parts of the process is the actual collaboration that goes into making the pieces. Not many people who visit the Museum understand the amount of preparation, organization, and finishing that goes into our projects. Many audience members tell us that we make glassblowing look easy, but that apparent ease is really the combined years of experience working together as a team, knowledge of one another’s strengths and weaknesses, and the planning and delegation that happens before we even touch the glass. Often that preparation, along with finishing steps once the piece comes off the pipe, can take longer than the actual time spent in the Hot Shop. This is one aspect of the Hot Shop that is not always apparent to the casual observer.
One of visitors’ most common misconceptions is that the objects they see being made in the Hot Shop are finished when they are broken free from the pipe. That is rarely the case. There is often an entire other process that the glass must go through to be considered complete. That is where I come in. These finishing touches are frequently discussed amongst the glassblowers and me – the coldworker – prior to making the object, due to complications that can arise in the cold shop when glass is in its fragile solid state. The technique by which glass is made in the Hot Shop, including shape, color application, or punty placement, affects how a piece can be finished.
At MOG, the cold shop is behind our hot shop at the back of the cone – not visible to our audience. It is a concrete room filled with industrial machines, such as belt sanders, angle grinders, lathes, saws, and flat mills, along with large floor drains running down the middle for water from the machines to drain properly. Coldworking can be described as the manipulation or alteration of glass without the use of heat. Instead, it involves the use of water-fed machines and techniques to grind, sand, cut, and polish. This process takes place after the glass has been annealed (cooled to room temperature).
Coldworking can be as simple as the removal of a small blemish, or as complex as days of precision grinding to fit and glue multiple glass pieces together. Coldworking can completely transform glass objects from a hot shop, but it is also necessary in other glassmaking processes, such as kiln and sand castings, stained glass, fusing, engraving, and cold assemblages such as lamination. While planning the next iteration of the Museum’s Out of the Vault exhibition series with the rest of the Hot Shop Team, I decided to pick work that not only inspires me but also highlights how coldworking can be incorporated in various ways of which the viewer might not be aware. Often, this causes that “How was this made?” question to arise. By intentionally creating space in the galleries to answer that question and address a variety of coldworking techniques, I hope that we confront the misconceptions about the complete glassmaking process, and our guests are provided with a more complete view of the glassblowing process.
After spending years in a hot shop in school, I realized how much more the actual process of coldworking, and the results you can achieve through coldwork, are where my true passion lies. Seeing professional glass artists using advanced coldworking techniques combined with my love of collaborating with a team put me on the path that led me to where I am today, and I hope that my selections from MOG’s Permanent Collection in the upcoming iteration of the Out of the Vault series show viewers a new perspective on the behind-scenes-world of coldworking that I love. There is so much more to the world of glassmaking than just what you see in front of the furnaces, and I hope that this exhibition inspires Museum guests to learn more about how works of glass art are completed after the annealer.
Stay tuned for the announcement of the opening date for the next iteration of Out of the Vault. This Permanent Collection exhibition will curated by the Museum of Glass Hot Shop Team.
Kristin Elliot. Photo by Kristin Tornga Photography.
About the Artist:
Kristin Elliot earned a BFA in Glass with a minor in Art History from Emporia State University. In 2011, she moved to Seattle and became an integral part of the glass community through coldworking. Elliot, who is the sole coldworker at Museum of Glass, started her professional career at Huchthausen Studios where she has been the lead studio technician and manager for seven years. Her passion for cold glass and commitment to its precision has allowed her to open a cold shop in Tacoma, where she freelances for artists around the country. Elliot's personal work brings together all her knowledge of cold techniques but focuses mainly on the process of lamination and polishing.