Green glass pieces like these are unique to The Jamestown Glasshouse.
From out of the depth of a stone kiln, a fiery red orb emerges. Attached to a long metal tube, the small glowing ball is carefully placed onto a metal sheet and rolled out into a cylinder. Then, in an almost magical feat, a single human breath flowing through the hollows of the rod causes the molten material to take shape, and the beginning of a unique masterpiece emerges.
Dating back to 1608, just a year after Jamestown was founded, The Glasshouse was America’s first English industrial manufacturing business. Owned by the Virginia Company, investors sought to show that profits could be made in the colonies. At that time, glassmaking was an extremely lucrative industry; however, it was being choked by regulations and scarcity of materials back in England. The Virginia Company was convinced that it could not only make fine glass, but produce enough of it that the breakage expected to occur during shipping would be of little consequence to the profits.
A blower pulls molten glass from the crucible to prepare for shaping.
The original glassworkers in Jamestown were a small group of Germans, who brought the secrets of the trade across the Atlantic to the colonies. Lured by the Virginia Company with the promises of riches, these early workers had huge dreams, but the realities of forging glass in the New World soon came crashing down upon them. What emerged from their endeavors is a story of determination and strife. Captain John Smith wrote that the Germans were the only initial laborers who actually knew what a “dayes worke was,” and evidence indicates the glassmakers labored two months inside James Fort just to produce a “tryal of glasse” that was returned to England at the end of 1608. The test glass was probably no more than a small block, or ingot, to prove Virginia’s resources could make glass.
Old-fashioned, blue glass ornaments are handmade seasonally.
In 1610, the colony’s secretary, William Strachey, recorded the most detailed surviving description of the site, saying materials were in such abundance that The Glasshouse had produced enough to necessitate the construction of a storage building. While they worked hard at their craft, the tradesmen were besieged with a string of events that would ultimately result in the downfall of the nation’s first industrial business. In correspondences, Smith wrote that Powhatan warriors killed some of the initial German workers in an attack. That was followed by a “horrific” winter that brought starvation and disease to the colony, wiping out the remaining glassblowers. More than a dozen years later, another group of glassblowers were in the throes of resurrecting the business, but they too were doomed. First beset by terrible storms that devastated the area, the Powhatan Uprising closely followed — which saw nearly a quarter of the Jamestown residents massacred. Every industry, including glassmaking, was subsequently brought to a halt in Virginia. In the following years, Venetians were brought over to The Glasshouse but refused to work with the local sand. Later, an Italian group was said to have worked so slowly that they accomplished nothing, destroying the main crucible, a container used to melt glass in a kiln, in their anger over their circumstances. In a letter, the treasurer of The London Company described those glassmakers as, “A more damned crew Hell never vomited.” The entire site was abandoned sometime on the mid-1600s, and lost to the ravages of time, until it was rediscovered by researcher Jesse Dimmick in 1931.
A molten ball of glass, just taken from the kiln, is prepared for work.
In the 1940s, archeologists began unearthing the site, uncovering a well, clay pit, four furnaces, broken glass and molten glass drippings. Subsequent digs have found extensive proof of the glassworks, including multiple sites where kilns, furnaces, crucibles and other tools of the trade lay buried, suggesting the business may have been more extensive than originally hypothesized. In the 1950s, built next to the ruins of the original company, a new glasshouse was constructed, but in a continuation of the calamities that plagued the site, it was lost to a fire in 1974. The current structure was built in 1976 and was designed to be a replica of the original 1608 building.
Through research, artists have been able to render what the original glassworks looked like in 1609.
Today, nestled back behind foliage and a looping path, The Glasshouse takes you from modern day life to living history with industrious beauty. The large columned building is usually open on all sides, with walls that can be removed so that visitors can witness the process without suffering from the high heat. Artisans in period dress create glassworks with the same types of tools used by the original 1608 craftsmen. Each night, raw material is melted down in a crucible inside the furnace, which burns at approximately 2,000 degrees. Although now fired by gas, the stone kiln is true in shape and construction to those used by the original craftsmen in Jamestown. Each morning, a pool of molten glass is ready for the glassblowers to shape and craft into fantastic creations, most of which are reproductions of sixteenth through eighteenth-century works. Blowers then use a five-foot-long blowpipe, dip it into the pool of molten glass, gather it up by spinning the rod, and start to form it.
The super-heated silica (at left) is rolled and meticulously shaped into pieces like the jug (at right) in full view of visitors.
“Initially we roll it into a cylinder on a sheet of steel, then we blow into it and shape it using our breath, gravity and our tools,” explained Eric Schneider, the lead journeyman glassblower at the historic site, adding that workers then use a pontil rod with flattened molten glass on it, attach it to the vessel, break it off the blowpipe, reheat the piece as needed, and then finish the work using various tools to make the work they are striving for.
Interestingly, although they produce four different colors of glass at The Glasshouse, including blue, teal and red using various oxides and additives, green is the most seen in finished pieces. The reason for that, and why so many pieces of antique and ancient glass are that glorious green, is because it is the natural color of glass! When in its original form, the sand or silica that is melted down from nature has rust and a small amount of nickel in it, resulting in the emerald-hued finished product.
The Glasshouse uses the same processes, additives and apparatuses that were used in the 1600s. Visitors are awed by not only the colonial atmosphere, but also the sounds of the tools — from the clinking of jacks, the hiss of water on wooden paddles as the glass is shaped, and the roar of the furnace as it keeps the nearly 400 pounds of molten material hot enough to be worked by the blowers.
Beautiful green pitcher fashioned at Jamestown's Glasshouse.
“It is almost an instant gratification art, and even the longest piece... you have to work with it quickly,” Schneider said. “There is a rapid, dramatic transformation that occurs right before your eyes.”
Schneider is one of a privileged few in the nation who can call themselves historic glassblowers. All of the craftsmen onsite go through a four-year apprenticeship before they can even be called a glassblowing journeyman. Although they aren’t considered master glassblowers, because those individuals must own their own shop for that designation, most of the journeymen at The Glasshouse have been working there for more than 15 years. Schneider, who is the foremost expert, has been working at the location for more than 25 years after falling in love with the craft during a stint as a gift shop worker when he was in high school.
“There is magic here, and I really think it sticks in people’s heads after they visit because it is so dramatic,” he said. “It is such a cool process to see molten liquid transform in minutes to something aesthetically pleasing.”
Schneider and his team make anywhere from 70 to 100 pieces a day, the bulk of which are sold at The Glasshouse’s gift shop; however, they also ship items to more than 70 other national park stores around the country. Many of the glass objects are authentic to designs from early Jamestown, including medicine bottles, brandy glasses, wine bottles, candleholders and pitchers.
The Glasshouse and Glasshouse Gift Shop are operated by a non-profit organization that supports the National Park Service. All of the glass sales come back to the National Park Service. Any purchase helps support the glassblowing demonstrations and the National Park Service at Historic Jamestown. For more information about this amazing and unique experience, or to plan your trip, visit www.nps.gov/jame/planyourvisit/glasshouse or call 757-229.2437.
The House & Home Magazine would like to extend its sincere appreciation to Gwyn Johnson, Eric Schneider, and Emily Suth for their invaluable contributions to the research of this article.