In designing our facility and equipment, we have taken advice from many local glass artists. We are confident the studio will accommodate most of your artistic needs. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for improvements.

There are lots of pictures of our facility from our grand opening posted on Tony Patti's www.glassblower.info web site. Check them out!

A shot showing the medium and large gloryholes as well as one of the rolling yokes. This picture was taken before the small gloryholes were completed. Notice the hood/ventilation system.

Maestro Elio Quarisa using one of our small gloryholes. We have two at this size and run the majority of our classes on them.

Our glass-melting furnace. This is a 350 lbs tank furnace, built with an AZS liner and natural-gas fired. We charge (fill) the furnace at least once, sometime twice per week. Next to the furnace, you can see the large pipe warmer, which keeps glass blowing pipes ready for use.

Here are a couple of shots of our annealers; we currently have two top loading and one front loading annealers. You can see the mullite shelves in the front loader. All of our equipment is built to be as modular and reconfigurable as possible; the shelves are always changed to accomodate whatever scale glass work is being made. These annealers are so well insulated, that they can run all day at 900 degrees F and still be just warm to the touch.

We try to accomodate all glass blowing styles and techniques. The garage is a piece of equipment essential to Venetian style glass blowing. Our garage is large and works really, really well; there are thermocouples on both the hot and cold side and it keeps a very steady temperature. Next to the garage is our color box; this is a copy of the design used at the Corning studio. Metal trays are used to hold the glass color and there is a special tool used to move the trays in and our of the operating oven. All of our annealers and the color box have kill switches to kill the power when the door is opened. We feel this is an simple, essential (and often omitted) way to prevent injuries.