During different historical periods, glass making workshops have been active in many cities where various glass products have been created in different ways. The most important province of Iran where the active workshops of making and producing glass products still exist in Tehran.
Different methods of making traditional glass are three ways of blowing, mold-bowling and pressing. In order to produce glass with blowing technique (free-blowing) at first, the raw materials of glass which are mostly glass particles are poured into the furnace to be melted. After being completely melted, the workman soaks a blowpipe named Dam in the molten glass while rotating it. The workman bowls into Dam after taking a little portion of molten glass, which is now called Baar, and spooling it at one end of the blowpipe, resulted in making a small bubble named then “the first ball”.
During the next phase, another portion of Baar is taken from the furnace spooling around the first ball and the workman creates the desired shape through forming the ball using a tool named “wooden spoon”. If the produced objects are exposed to the normal air, they will be broken immediately after cooling.
Therefore, there exists a hothouse inside the glass workshops with 45-55° C temperature where the objects are gradually cooling with temperature change in the atmosphere of the room. In the mold-blowing method, a portion of molten glass is taken from the furnace using Dam and after preparing and blowing, another portion is added to the first ball, heated and finally inflated into a mold in order to get the shape of the mold. Usually, the objects produced using this method are applicable and they are produced with high quality and not expensive such as lemon, rose water, vinegar, jams bottles and glasses as well as light bubbles.
Pressing method is also used for making different kinds of bottle in such a way that the worker takes a desired portion of the molten glass with the aid of Dam, detaches it immediately in order to place it into the pressing mold. Closing the mold leads the paste to get the shape of mold in effect of the air pressure. Various methods have been used for decorating traditional glasses since the past. Interesting among them are colorizing glass, opacifying, carving and painting on glass.
Cultural Beauties of Iran: Kalpurgan Pottery
