The Brightside: Glass Blowing in Berlin
BERLIN, Md. – Berlin is known for having a lot of art packed into the tiny town, and Jeffrey Auxer is one of the people behind a lot of that art. Stepping in to Jeff’s studio and watching him work, it’s easy to see he’s a pro. He’s been glass blowing for over 15 years now.
“I started when I was in Salisbury going to college there, I was in my last semester and had no idea what it was, and that was in 2006,” he said.
Instantly, what started out as a few extra credits for graduation turned into a career.
“I just fell in love with it right away, and I decided that that’s what I wanted to do,” Jeff said.
So after graduating Jeff opened his glass blowing studio in Berlin, and since then he’s made hundreds of items.
“We’ve done some cool stuff, my favorite part of making this is talking to someone, or figuring out what I want it to be, or what someone else wants it to be, and then we make it and it’s installed or you just see it and it’s exactly kind of what you were looking for,” he explained.
And while the pieces are truly beautiful to look at, they’re oftentimes functional as well.
“We typically do commercial and residential lighting, like chandeliers, pendants, lights over the island, that type of thing,” Jeff said.
And it all starts in the workshop attached to Jeff’s storefront. While the process is complicated, Jeff makes it look and sound easy. It starts with that molten glass on the end of a rod that Jeff then adds air to before shaping it.
“So right now it’s solid, so we want some air, so what I’m going to do is trap some air and you’ll see this glass get bigger and we’ll know that there’s a bubble in there,” he explained in a demo to our team.
From there, it’s really just a lot of heating the glass, shaping it, cooling it off, and so on. But for the piece he was making in front of our team, Jeff wanted to add some color.
“And so now we have our colored glass on there but I need to shape it up a little bit, but before I do that I need to get the colored glass to melt into the clear glass,” he explained.
What started as just clear, liquid glass turned into a colorful bowl that can be used as a centerpiece or decoration. And if you think it looks like fun, you can get in on the action.
“We also give classes on this stuff, we’ve been doing ornament classes, this past year was our 12th year doing them, and it was our busiest year by far,” Jeff said.
Because Jeff says he just loves sharing his hobby-turned-career with anyone who wants to try, even if you don’t necessarily consider yourself an artist.
“We want everyone to come out with something nice, we want them to have something that is nice, so we try to make the process as easy as possible, and it’s pretty flawless,” he said.
If you’re interested in trying one of those classes you can find more information on the Jeffrey Auxer Designs Facebook Page. He says they’ve added more classes throughout the spring because they became so popular.
