glasstorm studio

The week I spent in Tain, Scotland at the Glasstorm Studio was a lot of fun. We rented the studio for six days and worked from 8am to 8pm each day... but still it didn't seem like enough time since I rarely get to blow glass living here in Singapore. The long hours in the studio were fine since the weather in Scotland, even in August, seemed to be quite cold and I had no warm clothes at all- very unprepared! but standing in the studio next to the 2000 deg F furnace seemed sufficient to stay warm. I think I did pretty well for not having worked in a studio at all in several months and I'm pretty happy with a few of the cups that I made- I took a few of them home with me.


















Here are some other pictures from the trip into Tain and during the week there.
Lots of barley is grown in the countryside required for all the scotch made there. I took this on the train from Edinburgh to Inverness. From there I took another bus to Tain which was about one hour north of Inverness. Actually the trip from Singapore to Tain was so long. It was a thirteen hour plan ride from Singapore to London. Then it took 2 hours to get through immigrations at Heathrow! I've never been a line that long before. So it was already almost 9pm by the time I cleared and needed to get to Euston Train station across town to catch a train to Scotland. I missed the one I wanted to take because immigration took so long but I knew there one was one last train that would leave just before midnight. Once I got to the station though I found out that you needed to have made advance reservations for that train because it was a sleeper train only. I didn't have reservations so needed to wait to see if there was space left once everyone checked in.. there was a huge line of other people trying to get on and I thought there was no way I'd get on. but as it got closer and closer to the departure time they started to let people on and literally at the last minute I was able to get on and got a bed to sleep in even. It's not a bad trip when you can sleep during the overnight train ride. But tickets were so expensive I could not believe it. So it went overnight to Edinburgh and then I transferred trains to get up to Inverness. In hindsight I think I should have made better travel plans. I would have flown to Edinburgh or Inverness and it would have been cheaper than the train.... plus less time. But I really wanted to take the A380. Actually it was cool to take it but it didn't really seem much different than any other planes on the inside...



A yard with lots of oak casks for aging the scotch

The bed and breakfast we stayed at. The Craigh Du. most of the accomodation in Tain was the bed and breakfast type. Most people visit this part of Scotland for either golf or for the Scotch. They must have thought we were crazy.

The GlenMorangie Distillery was just down the road from Tain. We didn't have time during the days to go visit it but on the first day we walked down to take a look. They were not open for tours let since it was before 12:30pm on a Sunday... and there is a law saying it's illegal to drink before 12:30pm on a Sunday... so they didn't have tours running until after that. Actually I didn't even try any Scotch the entire time in Tain. In retrospect this seems very unfortunate.


Glasstorm Studio from the outside and from the inside. It was a very nice and clean studio and everything worked really well.

Scrap bucket with lots of unfinished goblet tops and bottoms.. working with glass, expecially cups, usually ends up with lots of rejects and broken pieces (hopefully as little as possible of both though). When making a set of matching cups even the master glass blowers might have to make 3-4 times as many pieces as the set calls for to get enough to match in color and size (this is what one of the masters in Murano, Italy, told me while I was there). Not that any one of us in Tain were trying to make a matching set of cups but we still ended up with lots of broken, unfinished or ugly pieces. We would normally work in the mornings concentrating on just making cup tops then spend the afternoons making stems, feet and assembling them into finished cups.
A few more of the cups I made. These two didn't survive and were broken so I didn't get to take them back... too bad because they were pretty nice.

On the last night we wanted to take Brodie and Nichola out to dinner for a show of thanks... Brodie suggested to have his fisherman friend catch some fresh lobsters and have a dinner in their studio showroom next door to the glass studio...
They set up tables in the studio and put together a great spread of food plus the fresh lobsters. It was a really great dinner and a great atmosphere to have dinner there in their gallery. I don't think I've ever had that much lobster in my entire life and we couldn't even finish all of it. Luckily we had lots of brand new wine glasses to drink from, too..the product of the weeks work.
One of the biggest lobsters I've ever seen with the fisherman... and that's a big guy- over six feet



The group photo on the last night just after dinner. we were happy and full. It was a really great experiance in Tain, everyone had fun, no one got too hurt. I only got one burn and we made some great new friends. Next time I'd bring more warm clothes but it couldn't have been much better.