These are great pictures. Very interesting!

A visit to the hot shops at Corning, The Tacoma Museum of Glass or any large scale hot glass worker will shed some light on these pictures. Aside from the stark nature of the shop shown here and the sparse equipment it is very similar to other hot shops.

The floor is often littered with small shards of glass. The chair does have a wood seat under the worker, but only on one side of the chair. the board protrudes from the right side with a space for tools. The floor is clean in the picture where the cane is pulled.

Some additional pictures I'd love to see include
- the optic molds that gives the glass gathers the chevron star shape.
- the furnace holding the various colors of glass.
= a series of pictures following the production of one cane as each color is added, the gather is molded and each additional layer is added.

I don't think the brick based object behind the glass worker is the "glory hole" where the gather is heated and re heated to keep it workable. Looking closely at the stack of canes it appears that some have a hole in the center and some do not. As some of you know, the first samples of this cane I shot in Guangzhou did NOT have a hole.

I guess I have to find time to travel to Shandong province....