BERLIN, Md. -- There are plenty of ways to deal with sub-freezing temperatures: a nice jacket, a hat, and a pair of gloves go a long way. Or, you can work at a glass-blowing studio and stand next to 2,000-degree furnaces all day.
On Thursday, the outside temperature in Berlin was a crisp 29 degrees. That wintery chill melts away quickly inside Jeffrey Auxer Designs, a glass-blowing studio in Berlin, where two furnaces heat up the room to a balmy 120 degrees.
"The equipment we run runs around 2,200 degrees so that heat coming in there, it's obviously super, super hot," said Jeff Auxer.
Jeff and his coworker Jake O'neil created a few plates on Thursday to showcase their blistering process. It all starts with furnace number one.
"That's what holds all of our liquid molten glass, it's 2,100 degrees, and he just gathered a little bit of the clear glass on the end of this pipe," said O'neil.
O'neil watched as Auxer pulled a long metal pipe from the furnace, the end of which was covered with red-hot molten glass. Auxer then took the bulb over to a two-inch-thick steel table, where he began to shape the glass.
Once the bulb cooled, Auxer added more molten glass and then covered it with colored glass crystals. The crystals give each piece of art its distinct color and design.
Those crystals are melted in the studio's second furnace, which is also heated to 2,100 degrees. Then, using a combination of tools and techniques, the plate begins to take shape.
The glass then takes a final trip into the furnace, where it's spun, pulled out, shaped again, broken away from the pipe, and left to cool.
"It's not something that you can come back to and finish, once you're finished with it, it's finished, we put it in our kiln, that it, it's done," said Auxer.
A fiery process that requires those involved to be cool, calm and collected.
