Lampworking: A Look at the Art and Technique
What Lampworking Is
Lampworking is a way of shaping glass using a torch. The flame heats the glass until it turns molten. Then, the artist shapes it by hand, using tools and controlled movements. You might hear people call it flameworking or torchworking instead, since nobody uses oil lamps for it anymore.
It’s hard to pin down exactly when lampworking began, because the term itself isn't clearly defined. But the oldest proven pieces made this way are likely some glass beads from around the fifth century BCE. Lampworking gained real momentum in 14th-century Murano, Italy. By the 1600s, traveling glassworkers were already showing off this technique in public demos. In the mid-1800s, artists in France started using lampworking to make paperweights. That became a big trend, and collectors still look for those pieces today.
Lampworking and glassblowing aren’t the same. Glassblowing uses a big furnace for heat. Lampworking sticks with a smaller torch, though sometimes glassblowers use torches too.
How the Tools Have Changed
Back when this started, people used oil lamps and blew air through pipes to raise the flame’s heat. Some used foot-powered bellows to keep the flame steady.
Now, most lampworkers use modern torches. These run on propane or natural gas. In some countries, people use butane. They mix the fuel with air or pure oxygen. Hobbyists often go with MAPP gas in small canisters because it’s portable. Some also use oxygen concentrators instead of bottled oxygen, which gives them a constant supply.
What Lampworking Can Make
Lampworking covers a wide range of glass art. People use it to make beads, figurines, marbles, tiny vessels, and sculptures. You’ll see it in seasonal stuff too, like handmade glass ornaments for Christmas trees. On the practical side, lampworking is used to make lab tools and realistic glass models of plants and animals.
Types of Glass Used in Lampworking
A few kinds of glass work well for lampworking, but three are most common. Soda-lime glass and lead glass fall under what’s called “soft glass.” Borosilicate glass is often called “hard glass.”
In the past, leaded glass tubing was big in the neon sign industry. A lot of lampworkers in the US used that same tubing to create blown glass pieces. Some neon glass came pre-colored, which made it useful for small, colorful work. Artists also used colored rods made from lead or soda-lime glass to add detail or patterns to both clear and colored tubes.
Over time, people have moved away from soft glass tubing. Some of that change comes from health and environmental concerns. But the bigger reason is that borosilicate has taken over. It’s stronger and easier to work with. Once companies started making colored borosilicate that worked well with clear versions, most lampworkers made the switch.
Working with Soft Glass vs. Borosilicate
Soft glass melts at lower temperatures, which can be helpful. But it doesn't handle quick temperature changes well. It expands and contracts a lot when it's heated or cooled. That makes it tricky, especially if you're working on a piece with thick and thin parts. If a thinner section cools too much and drops below its stress point, it can crack. Borosilicate, or hard glass, doesn’t shrink nearly as much. So it's easier to manage and less likely to crack from temperature swings.
Borosilicate is still just regular silicate glass, made mostly from SiO2, but it’s mixed with boron. That boron changes the glass structure, making it more flexible and stable.
Glass Compatibility and Thermal Expansion
If you're melting different glasses together, they need to be compatible. That means they need to work well both chemically and in terms of thermal expansion. The term for this is coefficient of thermal expansion, or COE. You’ll also see it called CTE sometimes.
If two glasses with different COEs are fused, they can cool unevenly. That puts internal stress in the piece. And when that happens, the finished glass can crack or even shatter. Soft glass is more likely to have chemical compatibility issues than borosilicate, so you have to be more careful when mixing soft glass colors.
Some color mixes react during melting. That’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes the reaction gives you metallic sheens, color changes, or web-like patterns that look great. But you can also get things you don’t want, like weird colors, bubbles, or devitrification, which ruins the glass surface.
Why Borosilicate Is Popular
Borosilicate is seen as more forgiving. Its low COE makes it more resistant to cracking than soda-lime or lead glass. But it’s not perfect. It has a tighter temperature range for working. That means the glass goes from soft to too soft very quickly, so timing matters. It also doesn’t come in as many colors, and it’s a lot more expensive.
Borosilicate also melts at higher temps than soft glass. So you need a stronger flame, which means burning gas with oxygen instead of air. That oxygen mix gives you a hotter flame and better control. You can fine-tune whether your flame is oxidizing or reducing, which matters because some coloring agents in the glass need that kind of control. Too much oxygen can mess with the color, but just the right balance brings out what you want.
Lead Glass and Its Benefits
Lead glass has the widest temperature range of all three main types. It stays hot longer once it’s out of the flame. That gives you more time to shape your work, especially if you’re blowing hollow forms. It also holds up better when you’re working with pieces that change thickness, more so than soda-lime glass. It’s less likely to crack while you’re shaping it.
Glass Shapes, Sizes, and Options
Glass for lampworking comes in a ton of options. You’ll find it in many colors, sizes, and shapes. Most artists use glass made by manufacturers. You can buy it as rods, tubes, sheets, or frit.
Glass rods come in sizes from as small as 1 mm up to 50 mm or more. Some rods are shaped like squares, triangles, or half rounds. Tubes come in a wide range too. You can get them in different diameters, colors, and even fancy shapes like scalloped, twisted, or lined.
Frit is crushed glass that’s been sorted into different grain sizes. You can use it for adding texture or color accents. Sheet glass comes in different thicknesses and can be cut before being shaped in the flame.
Over the past few decades, the glass industry has grown steadily. That growth keeps bringing new materials and forms for lampworkers to explore.
Types of Glass Used in Lampworking
Soda-lime glass is the most common type used in lampworking. It comes pre-colored and is the same basic recipe used in traditional furnace-blown glass. Back in the day, rods of soda-lime were pulled by hand straight from the furnace, then cooled so lampworkers could use them. Now, this "soft" glass is made in factories all over the world, including Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, China, and the US.
Another option is lead glass. It has lower viscosity and feels heavier than soda-lime. It’s also a little more forgiving when it comes to mismatched coefficients of expansion, which makes it easier to work with under certain conditions.
Then there's borosilicate, which is a much harder glass. It takes more heat to melt but has become a go-to choice for many lampworkers. Originally developed for lab glass, borosilicate started showing up in art studios once color options became available from different manufacturers. At one time, the look of soft glass and borosilicate was easy to tell apart. But that line has blurred. Soft-glass artists wanted the silver strike color effects common in borosilicate. Meanwhile, companies like Glass Alchemy developed bright, cadmium-based colors in the borosilicate line, sometimes called crayon colors. Now the difference in palette between soft and hard glass isn't as sharp.
Lampworkers also sometimes use fused quartz. This stuff takes serious heat, so artists use a hydrogen and oxygen torch to work with it. Quartz can handle extreme temperature changes and resists corrosion, which is why it's useful in science labs. But lately, it’s been catching on in the art world too. Still, quartz is only available in a few colors, so it’s a limited material creatively.
Tools Used in Lampworking
Most of the tools used for lampworking are pretty close to what you’d see in glassblowing. Graphite is a common material for tool surfaces because it holds up well under high heat. It also has a low friction rate and doesn't stick to molten glass. When tools need to be stronger, steel is the go-to. Some molds are made from fruitwood, but mostly wood is used for tool handles. Brass shows up too, especially when a little more grip is needed on the surface.
A bench burner is a fixed torch that stays mounted to the workbench. It gives you a steady flame to work with.
A hand torch is just what it sounds like. You hold it in your hand, which gives you more control over where the flame goes. It’s often used when the glass is on a lathe and can't be moved much.
A kiln is used to both garage and anneal the glass. That means it helps keep the piece warm while you work, then gradually cools it down so it doesn’t crack from thermal shock.
A marver is a flat surface you roll hot glass on to shape it or smooth it out. They’re usually made from graphite or steel.
A paddle is a marver with a handle. Same purpose, but easier to use on certain shapes.
A reamer is a pointed tool, usually made of graphite or brass, that helps you widen holes in the glass.
The blowhose and swivel setup lets you blow into hollow glass while still rotating it. The hose is usually latex and connects to a hollow swivel on the blowpipe.
A tungsten pick is perfect for dragging designs across the glass or poking holes through it. Tungsten can handle extreme heat without warping.
Steel shears are used to snip or cut hot glass during shaping.
Claw grabbers are metal tools designed to grip and turn hot pieces securely. They're often used once the glass has been taken off the blowpipe or pontil, especially during finishing work.
A glassworking lathe helps rotate and control the glass with precision. It’s especially useful for large pieces that are hard to turn by hand.
Once the design is set, the lampworker figures out how to build it step by step. To start, they slowly bring a glass rod or tube into the flame. Moving too fast can shock the glass and make it crack. When the glass gets molten, it's wrapped around a coated steel mandrel to form the core of the bead.
That coating on the mandrel is a bead release. It keeps the glass from sticking. It’s usually a clay-based material or boron nitride, and it makes it easy to slide the finished bead off later. Once the base is done, the bead can be shaped, patterned, or decorated in all kinds of ways.
Throughout the process, the lampworker has to keep the entire piece at an even heat. If one part cools off too fast, it can crack or break.
Annealing the Glass
After the piece is shaped and finished, it goes into a kiln to anneal. This is a key step. Annealing means heating the glass until it hits the stress-relief point. That’s a temperature where the glass won’t bend or melt, but any built-up tension inside it starts to relax.
The piece stays at this heat long enough to even out the temperature across the whole object. How long that takes depends on the type of glass and how thick the thickest part is.
Then it’s cooled slowly in stages. Once it gets below a certain range - usually somewhere between 900 and 1000 degrees Fahrenheit; the glass reaches a point where it can’t create more internal stress. From there, it can be cooled down to room temperature safely.
Skipping this step or doing it wrong can cause the glass to break later, even from a small change in temperature or a bump.
Finishing Techniques and Decorative Styles
Finished beads can be sandblasted for texture or faceted using lapidary methods, which cut sharp angles into the surface.
Some lampworkers make "furnace glass" beads. These are more complex versions of traditional seed beads. They used to be made using hot-shop methods, but lampworkers can now create similar styles using torches.
Chevron beads, which are built with multiple layers of colored glass, used to require special tubing made in furnaces. But today, skilled lampworkers can build up those layers at the torch, then cut or grind the ends to show the pattern.
As torches have gotten more powerful, the line between lampworking and furnace work is getting thinner. Artists can do more heavy-duty shaping and layering right at the bench than ever before.
Fuming with Precious Metals
Fuming is a technique that started gaining traction in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to Bob Snodgrass. It involves heating silver or gold in the flame until the metal vaporizes. That vapor coats the glass with a thin film of metal particles.
When the vapor sticks to hot glass, it changes the color. Silver makes clear glass look yellow, and when combined with darker backgrounds, it can give off blues and greens. Gold fume turns clear glass into pinks and reds.
The more the glass is fumed, the more visible and dramatic the color effect becomes. This process adds a shimmery, layered look that changes depending on how the light hits the piece.
The Growth of Modern Lampworking
For the past four centuries, lampworked beads were mostly made in Italy and Bohemia. Those artists kept their techniques close and rarely shared them.
But around thirty years ago, some American artists started trying it themselves. At first, the results weren’t great. They didn’t have access to much information, and the gear we have now didn’t exist.
But instead of keeping things secret, these early artists shared what they learned. Some of them even began making and selling new tools and torches.
That group became the backbone of what’s now the International Society of Glass Beadmakers, an organization that continues to support and grow the lampworking community.
