WE’RE COOKIN’ WITH GLASS!
Glass-making is one of the first art forms that the native Mexican people adopted from the Europeans… In the sixteenth century, Italian artisans passed on skills to their Indian assistants, who in turn were wise enough to establish their own factories.  Here in Tlaquepaque, on the outskirts of Guadalajara, the glass making shops are among the oldest in Mexico.  We visited one on Monday afternoon, and learned a few of the secrets that has made Tlaquepaque as important to the new world as Venice was to the old.

At Tlaquepaque’s most famous glass factory, Vitro Disenos Artesenales, we watched with great interest as the first phase of the glass-making operation began, using (or re-using) glass from various nearby bottling plants … glass which would otherwise be wasted.  This glass is cleaned in sieves, then melted at temperatures over 1600 degrees Celsius.  Various chemical oxides are added to the liquid glass to achieve certain colors.

Most of the pieces made at Vitro are ‘blown’, which means that the molten glass is gathered around the end of a long metal tube.  Artists with many years of experience then carefully blow into the mouthpiece, creating an air bubble inside the soft glass, and slowly forming a bottle.  Other artists stretch, flatten, and decorate these bottles in order to suit the desired shape and design.  Eight hundred separate pieces are made each day here at Vitro, each one by hand.

There are several different ‘jobs’ at a glass factory, ranging from the simplest tasks of cleaning and melting the glass, to the most skilled level of artistry.  Each worker attempts to move up through the various levels, in order to become a soplador.  The soplador is the most highly regarded of the glassmakers, and is responsible for the most delicate artwork for which the factory is commissioned.