How long have you done this?

I grew up not too far from Corning Glassworks in NY, and have been fascinated by glass blowing/glass art ever since we first visited there, probably in the 1960s.

but I'd taken a few "parks and rec" classes a few years before that.

I actually suck at glass blowing - I took an undergraduate art class on it and just can't manage the pace.

I didn't know pieces like that were so heavy.

that's what makes it so heavy. In general glass is reasonably heavy but with glass blowing it is easier to make thinner pieces than with glass fusing (which is what I do).

Our area has a fused glass studio as well as a glassblowing studio. I toured with our local Chamber of Commerce iwhen the fused glass studio was new so there were just a few samples. I don't think I hefted anything so didn't realize the difference.

3/8" - so it is basically a 3/8" by 9 1/4" circle of solid glass. That's also on the thick side for fused glass, most of which is usually 1/4" thick (if you leave fusible glass in a kiln at around 1500 degrees for long enough it will eventually even out into a 1/4" - 6mm - thick piece no matter who thick it was when you started - it is nicely reliable - this piece started at 6 1/4" by 5/28" and sat in the kiln for 1 hour 45 minutes at 1490 to get to the size I ended up with).

What makes blown glass lighter is you can get it reasonably thin if you are any good at it (sometimes you can get it too thin, especially if you aren't good at it). So, with blown glass you could make a plate that was only about 3/16" which would still probably weight 1 pound. One of the many things I struggled with when I tried to blow glass was I lacked the arm strength to pick up a nice big blob of molten glass from the crucible on the end of a 5 foot pole!

Our local glass blower has strength and heft to do it. But I can see the weight, not to mention the molten glass, which is dangerous.

frit stretch, which is used in glass fusing/glass kiln forming. You put colored glass bits on stacks of clear pieces and fire it in a kiln. When the clear glass has become a viscous liquid (at around 1450 degrees) it "stretches" the colored class towards the center as it flows.

Truly beautiful! Thank you for sharing.