I built a 30ft glass sculpture in my garden...watch how I make glass

Blackpool Gazette

Watch master glassblower John Ditchfield at work in his Lancashire studio, Glasform.  Drone footage shows the Dreamkeeper sculpture, which John built in his garden at Singleton and is now a local landmark.  He says: "It took about three years to make, in between other jobs. I can’t make anything really big in one hit because of the size of the furnace but I can put a lot of small pieces together to make a big piece.”

Transcript

00:00I've been a glassmaker since 1968 and I'm still learning.

00:09We make our own glass from raw materials and it's shoveled into the furnace and the furnace

00:15is never switched off and we tend to work from these glory holes, which are hotter and

00:22we can switch them on and off when we want to.

00:26We make probably one of the largest ranges of studio glass in Europe.

00:31It's mainly shapes that people recognise, not art alas so much but more mushrooms, apples,

00:38pears and things like this and various colours and so on and if you design something which

00:45is successful then you've got to make more and more of them and you get into a trap,

00:52you can't experiment or do anything else because you're a successful product and you keep reproducing

00:59it.

01:00The big one, traffic lights, we were quiet at the time and we thought we'd find something

01:07which we could make and add to and then put it down, maybe bring some people in and be

01:16a bit of a landmark of where we are and that took about, in between jobs, about three years

01:22to make that.

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