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David Whitehouse: One of the oldest ways of making a glass vessel was using a technique
known as core forming. Core forming involved making a soft, porous, earthenware core (you
can see a modern reproduction in the center of the display), and then, having fired that
at a low temperature, applying to the outside of the core colored glass. The next stage
in making the vessel is to apply threads of different colored molten glass, which are
going to turn into the pattern. The pattern is given its final appearance by rolling the
vessel on a smooth, flat surface, so that the applied trails of glass are no longer
standing proud from the surface but have merged with it, and the craftsman would take a probably
metal point and drag those colored trails up and down to create the feathery appearance.
The object was then carefully cooled to room temperature. The last stage in the process
was to get rid of the core, and one would take a metal pick and pick away at the core
that’s filling the interior of the vessel; you can see in the reproduction on the right
the core is still in place�