Hand blown glass at Carolina Creations

Don't know if you've noticed but we've got a lot of fabulous glass at Carolina Creations. We represent glass blowers from all over the country. Many of them studied at Penland in Spruce Pine.

The Penland School of Crafts is a is a national center for craft education located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Penland was founded by Miss Lucy Morgan, a teacher at an Episcopalian school that once occupied several buildings which are still part of Penland. In 1923, she organized the Penland Weavers which provided looms and materials to local women and marketed their handwoven goods. She invited guest instructors to teach weaving, and when requests for instruction began to come from other parts of the country, Penland School was born. Soon after the first students arrived in 1929, other crafts were added and the school began to raise funds, acquire property, and construct buildings.

Among other things it has become a major force in the American Glass Movement, many of the top glass blowers today either studied or taught at Penland or both.

Some of our top glass artists are Paul Counts, the guys from GlassHouse, Adam Kaser, and Rick Strini.

People sometimes ask why glass is so expensive. once you see what goes into it you'll see why.

On You Tube I've found several videos that show demonstrations of glass blowing. Here's one at a hot shop in Louisville I visited a few years back. And another from Tacoma. At any moment the piece their working on can self destruct and probably the worst is when it's finished, they've put it in the annealing oven to cool down and it explodes because the outside glass cools quicker than the inside glass.


As you know we always try to have items in a price range for every pocket book. So in addition to the larger pieces we also have some really cool glass ornaments like starfish, tear drops and jellyfish. We've been having a run on jellyfish this week!

Sometimes people see all the ornaments hanging in our window and ask "what do people do with them? Well.......... they hang them in their windows! You just suspend them from your window frame, put a cup hook up there and attach a piece of monofiliment to the ornament and hang it, we'll even give you the monofiliment.

We also have witch balls... you'll have to come into the gallery to hear about what those are!

On another note, we spent last evening on our porch with our close friends, watching the fireworks and the crowds of people coming down to Union Point. The evening was beautiful and it was great seeing so many people! The biggest crowd I can remember.

Keep the faith.

Jan Francoeur