The Firefly Glass studio was built specially to house Firefly Glass within the craft centre complex and is constructed from brick and pantile, the historic building material used in the Nottinghamshire rural area for over three hundred years. It is on the edge of Edwinstowe village, with its fabled connections with Maid Marian, and only a stone's throw from the heart of the ancient oak woodlands of Sherwood Forest. In Medieval times these stretched from Nottingham to the area around Doncaster and Wakefield in West Yorkshire, and were used as a hunting ground for the King. It was during the time of King John that the legend of Robin Hood began, a champion of the people's rights to continue hunting and finding food in the forest.The original forest was composed also of stretches of heathland and bracken with the most densely wooded area around Edwinstowe and Ollerton, where the ancient twisted oak trees of the forest today continue to attract thousands of visitors each year.
The raw material for making glass is called "batch". The glass batch used at Firefly Glass is made specially to Dan's own formula, and it is excellent to work with because of its crystal clarity and extended workablilty. It consists of a mix made mostly of white sand, with additions of sodium, potassium, litharge and borax, and is stained, as you can see, with an orange organic dye to identify its particular components.
At the heart of every glass studio is the furnace which contains a huge 150 kilogram ceramic pot of molten glass. The operating temperature is 1060 degrees centigrade maintained continuously except when re filling the pot every 3 days with batch (raw glass powder) when the temperature is taken to 1190 degrees centigrade overnight to ensure thorough melting.The natural gas fired furnace, and much of the other equipment was built by Dan's father, Chris Aston, who has been a studio potter for the past 34 years in Nottinghamshire, and has had much experience in building his own kilns and equipment, both electric and kerosene fired. The firebricks and metal framing were obtained locally, and the furnace control system and burner rig were installed by a specialist company from Birmingham.The furnace is very easy to work and maintain, and is very fuel efficient, and even phones Dan up when a problem occurs!
The glass pot inside the furnace, moulded from a ceramic material compound called sillimanite, was made at Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, about 35 miles away. The one shown here has fond memories for Dan, " It was the first glass pot I ever owned, and held 50 kilos of molten glass and it was in the furnace for about 14 months during which time it melted over four and a half tons of raw glass before finally wearing so thin that a hole appeared in the base causing a leak.
You can see from the picture how the glass attacks the walls of the pot quite severely over a period of time.The 50 kilo pot was changed for a larger 150 kilo pot in November 1999, and , since then, has stood full of plants, outside the studio door.
Now for the first steps in making a piece of glass! A hollow tube called a blowing iron is dipped into the furnace pot, then rotated to form a "gather" of molten glass which is brought out ready for working.
The glass is very soft and will drop off the end of the iron unless it is held horizontally and continually rotated, and Dan illustrates this to watching groups, who look on in amazement as he tilts the blowing iron downwards and the glass gather plummets to the floor where it immediately shatters on contact with the cold surface. This is one of their favourite moments!
The glass is quickly rolled, centred and slightly cooled on a flat steel plate called the marver.
Next, Dan blows a small bubble into the centre of the glass, and by immediately placing his thumb over the end of the blowing iron, the bubble expands with the heat to form the hollow inside of the piece of glass.This is then shaped and centred and a second gather of glass from the furnace applied over it.
On the glass maker's bench the blowing iron is rolled backwards and forwards and the malleable glass is shaped by hand using a thick pad of wet newsprint.
At this stage the glass is at about 1,000 centigrade and the bubble inside the glass can be clearly seen.
As the glass cools - it only has about two minutes working time- it can be made softer by reheating in a round furnace with a small aperture, known as the Glory Hole, maintained at a temperature of around 1200 centigrade.
As you can imagine, glass making is very intensive, strenuous, and hot work, the ideal excuse to go to the pub at night to replace all that moisture lost during a day's making! This is a habit traditionally pursued by most glass makers.
As a piece progresses the bubble is blown and extended in size, and the form shaped using a tool called "jacks"
Since it is the top of the glass piece which is attached to the iron, this has to be knocked off at some stage so that the top can be shaped. This is done by bringing a small gather of glass on a second iron, and attaching this to the base of the piece, which is then removed from the first iron with a couple of sharp taps.
Blown glass can include a great variety of shapes, from the simplest form to a complicated composite piece, and there are many other stages of making not covered on this page.

If you can visit the studio, you will gain a much broader understanding of the glassmaker's craft, but these notes may give you just a taste of what it is like to work in such an individual and exciting field.
The addition of colour and texture to glass is one of the things about making which Dan likes best.The bowl on the left has been formed from glass rolled into a pale blue fine powder and then blown into a ridged mould, called an optic, reheated in the glory hole and then rolled into a dark blue grit which only picks up on the raised ridges of the bubble. This is then coated with glass and as the bubble is blown bigger, the ridges twist into a spiral pattern.
The glass for the bowl on the left was rolled in pale orange powder, then on to violet chip and silver leaf, all encapsulated in a layer of clear glass.
Glass colour comes in a wide variety of different colours as well as various forms, from fine powder to granules and chips of different sizes, to coloured rod. Colour is added during making by dipping the hot glass on a blowing iron into the colours, and then heating it in the glory hole.
If the inside of a piece needs to be coloured, a slice of coloured rod is cut and heated to 450 degees centigrade in a small kiln, stuck to the tip of a blowing iron, a small bubble blown into it, and then it is encapsulated in clear glass.
When you move to the gallery page you will see a selection from the wide variety of colours and forms made here which will give you an insight into the pleasure and excitement to be derived from Dan's work. If you would like to visit the studio you can often see these processes taking place for yourself.