Blowing perfume bottles at Lava Glass

Lava Glass is an artistic glass-blowing studio located just outside Taupo. Unfortunately photography is not allowed in the shop or gardens, just in the production area (or at least nobody tried to stop me).

We had the chance to watch a journeyman glass-blower from England make some cute little perfume bottles from scratch: Starting from a furnace full of clear glass (molten), to the embedding of coloured beads, to the shaping of the inside of the bottle, the flat bottom, the opening at the top, and tapping the piece off the pipe twice.

We also learned a thing or two about glass-making - most importantly, that especially when hot, the glass may not shatter in the same way on impact - for instance, with the ground. And sometimes you can just pick-up where you left off. Whether that fallen piece should still be sold at full price though, perhaps that should be another matter.Read more