A first glass job

Bryce Alderton

Charlie Keeling took his pipe and inserted it into the 2,100-degree

furnace to extract the molten glass. Out came the pipe with a bright

orange ooze at the end.

He blew into the tube and returned it to the “glory hole,” a reheating

chamber that brings the glass back to its molten state.

Out came the rod with the glass on the end of the pipe that had turned

into a beautiful pale yellow elongated vase-like shape with different

shades of blue spotting the surface. He then blew into the glass, which

expanded, and then took a cloth and rubbed the glass until it was smooth.

The smell of burning glass permeated the air as the glory hole and

furnace radiated enough heat to force beads of sweat to begin forming on

the brow.

Keeling, 34, drives from his home in Upland every day during the

17-day run of the Orange County Fair to set up his glass blowing

demonstration in the Crafter’s Village.

“Everything except the roof and the fence I have to bring from home,”

Keeling said.

Keeling has come to every Orange County Fair since 1989 and also works

at the Los Angeles County Fair. He owns his own glass blowing business,

CJK Blowing Glass, in Upland. He graduated with a master’s degree in

glass/crafts from Cal State Fullerton.

Keeling performs European glass blowing, which originated in Italy, he

said. He also explained that the discovery of glass can be traced back to

the Phoenicians, though eventually the Egyptians imported the technology

to make their own precious gemstones.

Keeling doesn’t have a favorite glass product to make.

“It’s like my favorite song, it changes every day,” Keeling said.

To begin, Keeling mixes the sand and silica and dumps the mixture into

the furnace where it will be heated to form a mound of molten. The

furnace, which can hold 150 to 175 pounds of mixture, is heated to 2,100

degrees Fahrenheit to melt the glass.

Keeling collects a glob of molten glass on the end of the pipe and

blows into it, expanding and inflating the glass. The glass hardens as it

cools, but it doesn’t always form like he wants, so he has to put it in

the glory hole, which is the reheating chamber that returns the glass to

a molten state.

Different forms of glass melt at different temperatures and while

Keeling melts his at 2,100 degrees, others melt at even higher

temperatures.

“The glass I use is Spruce Pine Batch from Spruce Pine, N.C., and it’s

the type 85 percent of glassblowers use,” Keeling said.

The amount of times Keeling must put the glass in the glory hole

depends on several factors, such as wind and glass temperature and

thickness.

“A Christmas ornament may take four times and if it’s a thin piece, it

can’t be in [the glory hole] for very long. If it’s a thick paper weight,

it may have to stay in the chamber for four minutes,” Keeling said.

The glass quickly hardens and is in a fragile state, but Keeling has

one final trick up his sleeve: a blow torch. The flame softens the glass

yet again and Keeling twirls the rod and the glass blooms with ripples,

expanding outward to create a bowl. Keeling said the flame evens out the

temperature, so he then puts the bowl into an Aneal or Lehr -- both of

which are cooling chambers.

The glass is then suspended in the 877-degree Fahrenheit chamber,

which Keeling turns off at night, allowing the glass to cool in nine to

12 hours.