Come and have your own group visit to Dan Aston’s workshop and studio right next door to the Youth Hostel and enjoy an experience which combines history with the truly contemporary.
Do remember that a visit to Dan’s studio can be of great benefit to your children - it is not often now that they have the opportunity to see such a complete process, something beautiful formed in front of their eyes from the raw material, and to take part in a hands-on exercise themselves.
- Fascinating educational experience
- Spacious and airy work area
- Adjacent to the Youth Hostel
- Easy car and bus parking
- Undercover & suitable for use all year
- Only £7.50 per child
The leaflet is available in Adobe Acrobat Reader .pdf format, which can be opened both in Windows PC and AppleMac operating systems. Your operating system should contain the Reader programme by default, but if it does not, click the button on the right to install the appropriate Reader on your computer.
As well as the demonstration, there is the opportunity for each child
(and adult!) to decorate one of Dan’s colourful paperweights with metallic stencils, which, once the paperweight has been sandblasted, can be peeled off to reveal a permanent pattern through which glows the original colour - a shiny treasure to take home as a reminder of an interesting and fun-filled visit.
In his demonstration Dan will explain the equipment needed for glass blowing, and show the incandescent hot interior of his furnace with its great pot of molten glass - as you can see from the photograph below this produces a mixed effect of slight apprehension and jaw-dropping amazement!
He will illustrate how glass can be moulded in the few minutes before it becomes too hard, and how the molten glass falls from the blowing iron unless it is continually revolved, and most magical of all, how the glass bubble can be blown and expanded to form a great variety of individual and beautiful forms, in exactly the same way as glassblowers have done for thousands of years.
Dan trained at Sunderland University for three years followed by a year at the International Glass Centre at Brierley Hill, and has been here in his Nottinghamshire studio for eight years.
As one of the foremost in a band of new designer glassblowers in small scale studio workshops, he has sold and exhibited work throughout the UK, as well as Australia, Germany, Portugal and the USA.
Dan would love to welcome you all if you decide to make this experience part of your visit to Nottingham’s wonderful Sherwood Forest.
Also if you would like to do any pre-visit topic work there is a lot of extra information with illustrations on this website.