Kitchen Lighting: In the Cave of the Glass-Blowers
Mar 24th, 2008 by Marilyn
I know – I’ve sung the praises of our funny, edgy, delightful college town so many times.
You probably think I want everyone to move to Lawrence, Kansas.
But I don’t.
See, I wasn’t the first to spread the word, and now many, many more people live here.
Too many. We’ve seen bumper stickers that read “Welcome to Lawrence. Now get out.”
Oh, that is not very friendly. I’m sorry about that, newcomers.
No, really…welcome! Join us at Sylas & Maddy’s for some nice cold ice cream.
Right now there is pistachio almond. In the summer, they’ll have fresh peach.
Stroll Mass Street. Shop the galleries. Feel nicely bohemian, even if you are not.
If you have a long afternoon, ask the guys at Free State Glass if you can watch them work.
They are pretty laid-back dudes and will probably say yes.
You must be a laid-back dude to be a glass-blower. It is a requirement.
So laid-back that they let us hang around while they spun hot bits of glass into three new lamps – kitchen pendants, and the last fixtures to go up at the new old house.
The hot glass looked red, and then pink – but like magic, the finished lamps would cool down to a beautiful brown-streaked green, as we’d requested.
Blowing glass is the wildest thing.
Above, a lamp begins to cool down and the color slowly changes from smoking-hot red to green-streaked outside, white inside. While he spins the still-warm lamp, a cleaver helps build up the top.
Did you know? The National Endowment for the Arts ranks Lawrence in the top 12 U.S. cities with the largest percentage of working artists.
That is a lot of artists. And you know, not all of them are so great.
But some of them really are artists – and do things mere mortals can’t do.
Like form liquid into light.
they started out red, but cooled to green – three new lamps hang in our kitchen.
And that is a useful, beautiful, very bright art.
