Enameling at the Glass Furnace

The Glass Furnace is a glass art teaching facility located in the Beykoz district of Istanbul.  It is located in a rural setting on the outskirts of the city.  You can take classes in glass blowing, glass fusing, lampworking and my choice for a weekend - enameling.

The property is decorated with glass projects of students, resident and visiting instructors.

Parking lots are edged with large chunks of a beautiful blue transparent glass.

This cast glass piece was my favorite...

with charming birds.

Umut Demirguc works in metals and enamels and teaches the enameling class.  She has some nice strong jewelry pieces, which can be found on her website  www.umutdemirguc.com  Umut is fluent in English and taught the class in both Turkish and English, for my benefit.  At the end of day 1, I have my samples of the various techniques we learned.

The Glass Furnace also has two week classes in the summer time with lots of visiting glass artists.  The full schedule can be found on their website www.glassfurnace.org

After day 1, Umut drove a few of us from the countryside to spots closer to our homes.  Sheeps and goats needed to move out of the way for our car to pass.  Yes, we were certainly outside of the hussle bustle of the city.