Most people are familiar with the blown-glass art form from TV shows such as Blown Away or beautiful artists such as Dale Chihuly. They may not know that artisan glass lighting employs similar techniques and principles but on a production scale to enable the creation of 100+ complex pieces a day! To do this, Master glass blowers and artisan mold makers create the tools they need.

To create symmetrical pieces of glass, the mold makers create a spinning mold for the desired form. The mold and the glass blower’s skill will then produce the finished product.

Mold-blowing starts the same way as art glassblowing. A 2000+ degree gob of molten glass is placed on the end of the blowpipe and then rolled and shaped to remove any air pockets to prepare it for the mold. The gob is then placed in the mold and closed as the glassblower begins to blow the glass to take the shape of the mold. The glassblower spins the blowpipe as they blow to create a uniform and symmetrical form inside the mold.

Spinning molds are one of the most typical production art glass techniques and can produce many different symmetrical forms. Fabbian’s master glass blowers use spinning molds to create the best-selling Lumi (Sfera, Mochi, and Baka), classically-shaped Aerostat, and our newer Malvasia collections along with several other collections and custom forms.

View our master glass blowers create the F27 Aerostat glass using a spinning mold – watch here.

To learn more about glass production techniques and how they correlate with lighting design and earn 1.0 CEU credit hours for IIDA, ASID, and IDC, contact us to schedule a session for our IDCEC-accredited CEU, Learning to Specify Glass and Crystal Lighting Fixtures!