Glass blowing is an ancient art, seeming from the first attempts to form glass from silica.

The glassblower’s furnace on the Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver, BC. Close-up of a piece of art glass being heated in a the very hot furnace above. The Chemistry Department at UBC where I worked for many years had its own glassblower; someone to make all the beakers and experimental apparatus needed for custom experiments. This glass beaker glowing from within is part of a glass exhibit in the Netherlands Architecture Institute (Het Nieuwe Instituut) in Rotterdam, Holland.Back-lit blue vase in the window of a museum displaying glassware in Puebla, Mexico.Delicate hand-blown wine glasses in the Design Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. I think this iridescent glass vase in the Portland Art Museum, USA is from the 1920s, but it has the same iridescent qualities of ancient Roman glass found in an archaeological dig I was working on. Hand-blown glass vases in a craft shop in Ruthin, Wales. Chihuly’s large blown-glass sculptures are famous around the world. This one, called ‘Fiori di Como’, forms the ceiling of the Bellagio’s lobby in Las Vegas, USA.

More of Nancy Merrill’s Photo Challenge of the Week: Glass.