Grace and Expression: Exploring Wan Chai’s Glassblowing Studio

Teal metal gates and a cream-coloured Vespa greet Glazden’s visitors. A roaring furnace, heated to 1250 degrees Celsius, sits in the outdoor studio. Upon entry, ornate pine trees, swirling paperweights, and dazzling orbs rest on either side. Further along, a smaller studio houses torches and miniature furnace ovens, where delicate items such as pendants are created. In Wan Chai’s increasingly gentrified San Wa Fong Street, Glazden is more than a kitschy photo and a souvenir opportunity. It’s a tucked-away treasure that lets people explore their creativity through the unique art of glassmaking.

Officially opened to the public in early 2017, Glazden’s owner Zimon Chow has dedicated her time to improving her glassmaking skills and sharing her passion with others.

Glasswork is a relationship between the glass and artist. “It’s a kind of dancing,” Chow explained. “[When you’re] dancing as a couple, you know when you have to be aggressive, you know when you have to stop.” A few metres away from us, glassblowing artist Lok Kwan Tse spun glass inside the furnace’s intense temperatures, her motions fluid as her goggle-covered eyes focused on the expanding glass.

As I interviewed Chow, Tse expertly shifted between the furnace and gaffer’s bench; rolling, blowing, and shaping with impressive precision.

When she set up her shop, Chow knew she wanted fellow glass smiths to visit and create in Glazden. “At the beginning, I thought that I would be flying all over the world and keep learning. My master said, ‘you should stay at one place and then keep practicing yourself’. “ Their meeting was a beautiful alignment of circumstances. “By chance, I got to visit another Hong Kong girl who had established a glassblowing workshop in Taiwan.” While visiting her friend, Chow partook in a group exhibition at a glassblowing event. It was there she met her master, a Polish artist with 20 years’ experience. Chow undertook basic training with him in the Czech Republic, and after about a month returned to Hong Kong and established Glazden.

While she quickly took to the art and the business, this wasn’t Chow’s initial path. In the 1990s, the savvy woman owned a modelling business in Hong Kong. Then, everything changed with a gift.

Many years ago, Chow’s father gifted her a collection of glass vases. Their design inspired her to seek out glassmaking courses in Hong Kong. Her first workshop, a 30-minute class, focused on creating glass beads. Chow, dissatisfied with the project’s small scale, began seeking out more opportunities to study glassmaking. When she returned from the Czech Republic, she started Glazden as a platform for learning and development.

For the first nine months, the doors were closed to the public as Chow and her team gathered the necessary equipment from all over the world and tested them time and time again.

“We have crystal glass from the Czech Republic; we knew the programme from the factory. But we needed to make sure it went well with the furnace we ordered from the US.” To make sure they fully understood the equipment and how the components worked together, Chow and her team focused on testing for five to six months. Whenever they hit an issue they couldn’t resolve, they would check online, ask the factories that sold the goods, and change their programme. This was completely separate from the equipment setting process, which took another three months.

The high hurdles and steep learning curve involved in setting up a glass studio is a frustration few can manage. But Chow finds amusement, even joy, in failure. The founder admitted that her favourite part of glassmaking is an odd one. With a charming smile, Chow said, “When you think the work is getting there [approaching your vision], but somehow it cracks or falls off, I would say this is the funniest part and I quite like it. . . . I like having failures because if your path is smooth, you won’t know the way. If you get something wrong, you will learn from it.” Given the medium she’s working with, this is a sound mindset. Glassmaking is a surprisingly quick process with a slim margin of error. Blink, and it can all go sideways. The lightning speed of the process surprised all of Glazden’s visitors. “You don’t have to wait. . . . If you blow out too much, BOOM it’s collapsed.”

The art of glassblowing began in Palestine in 1 BCE. Created for both luxury and everyday use, these blown vessels were exported throughout the Roman Empire. Soon after, the Phoenicians and Egyptians established their own glass workshops. By the Middle Ages, Venice was the epicentre of the glass industry. Through the centuries, the techniques and formulas involved in the art were kept under lock and key. Passed from master to apprentice, revealing these secrets was an offence punishable by death.

When technological and social advancements in the late 19th and early 20th century revolutionised the world, the glass industry changed with the times.

In the late 1950s, Sir Alistair Pilkington set a new standard for glassmaking. He invented the now standard float glass production method, wherein the artist uses a blow tube to inflate molten glass into a bubble. 90% of glass is now produced using Pilkington’s method.

This very tactic is Tse’s specialty. Incredibly knowledgeable on the technical and practical aspects of glassmaking, Tse has a BA in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and a Masters of Glass Art and Science from VICARTE, a Portugal-based research unit where Tse spent about three years honing her hot sculpting skills.

Tse shares Chow’s positive perspective on failure. When attending VICARTE, Tse titled her final project “Failure”. Making the most of unexpected situations, Tse found a way to appreciate when her concepts didn’t go to plan. An ambitious concept, Tse used both ceramics and blown glass for her project series. “[It’s really hard for] ceramics to be compatible with glass, especially blown glass. For glassblowing, you control the temperature, and it is hard when they have different materials, expansion and viscosity. I made a ceramic that can have glass put into it [without] breaking. . . . I made different kinds of mistakes with different pieces in this project. That’s why they’re all failures.”

Kenji S. C., Chow’s other visiting artist, engages in more delicate projects. Specialising in flame work, the Japanese glass smith creates fine pieces with a flame torch and borosilicate glass. Melting the glass with a torch, borosilicate glass is a tougher substance than the materials used for traditional glassblowing.

In Japan, C. fell in love with the stylistic designs of glass pendants. “[In Nara] I learned how to make galaxy pendants. Going back to Hong Kong, I started to work on pendants, galaxy, and flowers. Then I [went to] America and learned to make pipes, [studying] in New Mexico for a few weeks.”

When he returned from America, Chow encouraged C. to set up in Glazden to further his skills. In time, C. grew more experienced and began teaching workshops. So far, over 200 people have learned how to create galaxy pendants under C.’s guidance.

His most recent signature work is an ongoing project. As people struggle with the rising costs and shrinking cemetery spaces, C. has developed a unique way to memorialise a loved one’s memory.

Dozens of trial runs were conducted with chicken and pork bones, which have a similar texture and consistency to human ash. The end result produced entire universes encapsulated with dotted remnants of the cremations.

“Some people look at the memorial glass art and say, ‘how can you make a profit out of a person’s death?’ “ This, Chow stressed, is not the point. “We are looking at a way to preserve someone’s memory and make it a beautiful personal experience for their loved ones. We take care to talk to them and listen to their stories. With help from Kenji, they are very involved in the process. They see a whole universe [develop] around their loved ones, and it makes them happy.”

In Glazden’s workshops, the artists focus more on the process than the production. When I asked C. how many pendants he could finish on a successful day, the flame worker quickly reframed the question.

“I don’t like to think in terms of productivity,” the Japanese artist replied. “For me, it’s more about the steps it takes to make a pendant. Thinking about a number takes the joy out of it. For me, the joy is important in art.” The product does not exist without the people.

This positive outlook is what Chow hopes to pass on to visitors. “We deliver skill sets to let people achieve what they want with our assistance,” Glazden’s founder said.

Creativity can hit at any time, as C. has experienced. “Sometimes . . . my dreams give me an idea. One time, I think it was four or five o’clock in the morning and I woke up [and went] ‘okay! I have an idea!’ My wife asked what happened. I told her and left to make it [a reality].” The spontaneity and freedom of C.’s creative process and the glass studio’s relaxed atmosphere is art in its purest form - expressive and open to opportunities.

When asked about her plans for the future, Chow laughed and shrugged. “There are things I would like to do, but I try not to plan too much,” she admitted. “For me, a lot of things happen that I couldn’t have imagined. I would like to have more time for glass blowing and help more students study glassmaking. But I like to take things as they come.” This optimistic approach has certainly worked in her favour. Set to enter its fourth year of production, Glazden has run successful workshops and completed commissions for illustrious events such as Island Shangri-La’s Iconic Wine Dinner.

Though Chow is still open to letting in international glass smiths, she is now more interested in supporting local talent. Currently she is working with novice and graduate art students from BU. “They might want to stay in the glass field, but find difficulty in flying overseas to learn. The alumni can’t go back to the university’s hot shop, so they have to go out and find another glass studio.” Fully self-funded, Chow and her team organise and complete workshops and commissions that help finance Glazden’s artist-in-residence programme and mentorships with BU students.

Small but mighty, this Wan Chai-based glass studio is a place where creativity comes to life.

Originally published in CULTURE Magazine Issue 179 (November-December 2019)