Description
About our blown glass dispensers
We design our hand blown glass soap dispensers with durability in mind. They have a stout shape with a stable bottom so they won’t knock over. In addition, we create the glass much thicker than some of the other items we make, so they will last a very long time. Available in a variety of solid colors and Robbins Ranch mixes. We can also create a custom color mix to match your decor, for a truly one of a kind dispenser to go into your home. You can use either liquid soap or hand lotion inside and they will hold approximately 24 oz of fluid. Pair your blown glass dispenser with a matching spice jar to hold Q-Tips or cotton balls, vitamins or bath salts. Dispensers come with either a white or black pump on top, with replacement pumps available. Please specify your color preference when ordering.
How we make them
First, we blow the glass base using molten clear glass and concentrated glass pigments. We carefully lay out designs with little chips of color on a big steel tabletop. We gather from a tank of clear using a long steel pipe. Dipping the pipe into the caldron of molten clear glass, we pull out some hot glass that looks like hot honey.
Carefully, we roll the hot glass on a steel tabletop to cool the first gather of clear. On the first gather we puff out a bubble inside the clear and start the core of the dispenser. Next we take another gather of clear and add thickness to the piece. In order to make a sturdy dispenser, we need to take two gathers of the clear first before adding the glass color to the surface. After we have a good amount of clear on the end of the blow pipe, we then roll into the glass pigments that give each piece a unique and colorful design. We shape the gather using cherrywood blocks and start blowing out the glass from the inside out.
We continue to blow out the glass until we have a form we are happy with. After several reheats and puffs of air, and forming the shape, we break the glass off of the end of blow pipe and place into an oven to cool down to room temperature. We keep the dispensers overnight in the oven for a very slow cooling. Then we remove them from the oven to grind down the spot where we removed the glass from the blow pipe. We then use diamond plated lapping wheels to flatten and polish the break off spot.
After we grind and level each piece properly, we fit a dispenser pump into the opening at the top. Each pumper is cut to fit to the bottom of the blown glass perfectly. Then we clean, price and pack each piece to sell. You might wonder why our blown glass dispenser is more expensive than some dispensers out on the market. Well, it’s a lot of work to create them from start to finish, and we use the highest of quality color and clear to create them. The overhead to make art glass is very high. But we take pride in the work that we do and we believe that the quality is worth the cost. We are grateful to be able to share our functional art with the world. Enjoy the colors!
