One of many small companies in the town, Farbglashütte Lauscha has been in business since 1853, and lets visitors take molten glass, fresh from the fire, and try blowing their own glass balls. The open doors of the furnaces reddened workers’ caps and faces. One by one, they approached the 2,552-degree Fahrenheit stoves, dipped steel tongs into liquid glass, and poured it (carefully) into a mold that, the day I was there, would make a sculpted angel.
No one wore gloves. Tinsel-like filaments of glass stretched and spilled from their tongs, cooling, then curling in beautiful spools on the concrete floor.
