One weekend, Richard and I visited the studio of "hot glass" artists (mother and son) whose work is well known in Kenya. After two wrong turns and more pot holes than road, we knew we were finally getting close when we passed this huge cow sculpture
and this beautiful stained glass wall perched in the grass.
Taa-daaa! Kitengela hot glass!
Inside the workshop we watched a well-coordinated team of men create beautiful glass products. The man sitting in the far back corner was given a pipe with molten glass on the end. He would blow it and hand it off to another guy who would bring it
to this furnace to be heated again. He would then hand it off to
one of these guys who would open and shape the bubble with tongs or thick newspaper dipped into water to help cool it. Notice each of the "shapers" has another man handy to keep the glass moving along.
The glass would then be spun to make a floppy olive dish,
or stretched with pliers to make an unusual vase,
or shaped into any number of these beautiful products. All of the glass is from recycled glass like windows, windshields and mayonnaise jars. They colour it with a powder made for tinting windows that you might see in a high-powered office building.
Every window was made of stained glass,
every shelf had glass curios,
and every suitable place had an enormous glass decoration just for fun.
We meandered through a separate workshop and discovered the source of all the stained glass.
There was a room with cubbies, organized by shade and colour, full of glass sheets ready for cutting and placement
into a work of art.
