The Pumpkin’s Artsy Side

It’s that time of year for pumpkins, even the glass-blown variety. Here, Jeremy Popelka and Chelsea Littman demonstrate, in about 10 minutes, how to make a small, glass-blown pumpkin. Photos by Tom Groenfeldt.

Jeremy Popelka and Chelsea Littman will make about half a dozen pumpkins for Halloween, including some fancy ones inspired by Italian pumpkins made in the 1950s, Popelka said.

“It’s really quick and gets people involved in the process,” said Popelka, of Popelka Trenchard Glass in Sturgeon Bay. He made a small pumpkin in about 10 minutes including a curly stem – just about the right amount of time for a demonstration for today’s attention-deficit audiences, Popelka said. 

Six pumpkins are about Littman’s limit. Working in production glass studios in Cleveland, she churned out dozens of the sure-selling gourds. Even worse was helping students in workshops produce dozens more. Popelka joked he was afraid she would quit if the Sturgeon Bay studio went into mass production.

They blew the glass for a pumpkin into an aluminum mold on the floor to produce the exterior lines on the pumpkin and rolled it in powdered metals to give the glass color. They then blew into the glass to expand it into a small pumpkin.

In addition to pumpkins, the studio demonstrates the making of a colorful, Murrini vase – a Venetian-style technique that Popelka has been using for a couple of decades to create his signature vessels.

These begin with a flat, fireproof slab on which Popelka assembles rows of different color tiles. He fires them multiple times, moving the tiles with a steel straight edge into tighter and tighter rectangles after each firing. He then rolls a steel rod over them to create what looks like a bracelet, striking just the right temperature to get them to stick to the rod, but not causing the different color tiles to melt into one another.

He spins the tube and blows into it, waiting until it seals at the end and stops whistling. Then the color core gets dipped into clear glass and fired some more, and blown some more. After it gains a rounded shape about eight–10 inches tall, Littman gets up on a table and takes hold of it about five feet off the ground, while Popelka partially flattens its cylindrical shape with fireproof paddles. A few more steps, and it has become a handsome vase.