We tested it for you ... The Glass Workshop in Saint-Méloir-des-Ondes

Blandine, Cécile Rozenn and I made a date to meet in Saint-Méloir des Ondes, behind the church, in a rather special workshop.

We push open the door and enter the shop area, where a variety of shapes and surprising colours catch the eye… We don’t know which way to turn!”

Balls, goblets, vases, glasses, jugs… blue, red, yellow, green, two-tone, three-tone… it’s another world!

A tactile shelf is accessible to children and allows them to touch, manipulate and play with the glass, it’s perfect for little hands.

Martine, the head glassblower, introduces us to the shop and its special products, made from sand, inspired by Malouine or and the workshop area, where everything is played out!”

We’ll try to get in touch with the molten material. An experienced glassmaker opens the doors to the furnace where the molten glass is picked up using a mailloche, a kind of wooden spoon. As she grabs the glass, she explains to us that this fluid, transparent material came, some 12 hours and 1350° earlier, in the form of flour thrown into the furnace.

The ball is blown gradually, between 1100° and 500°, to give it the appropriate shape. Then the colour or decoration is added. Determined in advance, the surprises are sometimes in store!

And this is where it all comes together: the glass has to be worked, blown or stretched and given the appropriate shape. From time to time, it has to be reheated, because glass cools quickly and becomes impossible to work.

The blowing experiment turns out to be trickier than we thought. Indeed, we have to blow into the stem and turn at the same time so that the bubble doesn’t turn into a drop and fall out. Our bubble is ephemeral and we blow until we get a bubble so fragile that just touching it shatters it!

Our second creation is totally different, but just as delicate. We once again pluck a ball of molten glass from the kiln and sit on a bench equipped with a shelf that allows us to rotate the rod to prevent the glass from leaking. Armed with a large pair of pattern tongs, we create a sheet. We stretch this material to give it the desired shape, a real leaf, just like the trees.

Martine then steps in for the delicate operation of adding the glass hook that will decorate our Christmas trees!