Take 30 pounds of molten glass on the end of a blowpipe, lots of trial-and-error glassblowing sessions, and a team of highly skilled glassmakers, and see what they come up with.
Last year Museum gaffers, led by George Kennard, created the World’s Largest Glass Pumpkin (97 inches around—more than 8 feet)! The pumpkin-making process took a team of eight glassblowers more than 50 hours of work, 17 attempts, a lot of shattered glass, and a number of lopsided prototypes.
More than 70 pounds of molten glass was blown into a wooden, ribbed mold (created especially for this project), and cooled very slowly in an extra-large annealing oven. The trickiest part was inflating the heavy molten glass bubble to just the right size so it wouldn’t shatter in the mold.
The giant pumpkin will be on display at the GlassMarket through October 31.
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