GlassBarge ends stay at Maritime Museum

The Corning Museum of Glass’s GlassBarge and the replica 1862 Class Schooner canal boat Lois McClure wrapped up their stay on the Rondout at the Hudson River Maritime Museum on Sunday with glass blowing demonstrations on the barge and deck tours of the McClure.

Catherine Ayers, a gaffer or glassblower with the Corning Museum of the Glass — loacted in Corning, New York — estimated about 3,000 people watched three days worth of demonstrations through Sunday.

Ayers, a glassblower for 16 years — including a six-year apprenticeship — demonstrated the making of a compote, a dish often used to hold a fancy dessert of the same name. She worked in soda lime glass, which she said is the most common type of glass used in the world.

The process started with Ayers sticking a long tube into a furnace where temperatures reached 2,100 degrees to “gather” the glass, She then stuck the glass into some rubygold frit or tiny pieces of crushed glass that gives the glass its color.

Ayers shaped the glass by spinning it on the same tube in another furnace as G Brian Juk, another gaffer, who also narrated the program, told the audience how the glass must be kept hot during the shaping process then slowly cooled to keep it from shattering.

Ayers assistant Lukas Milanak added a stem and Ayers used a special hand cutting tool to cut away pieces of glass that flowed away like lava. But nothing went to waste as the extra glass was crushed into an aggregate used to pave highways around Corning.

On the Lois McClure, volunteers from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Burlington, Vermont were teaching guests about the history of New York’s canals like the Erie and Champlain and lesserknown ones like the Chemung.

Kerry Batdorf, the ship’s carpenter, said these type of canal boats would’ve sailed lakes like Lake Champlain, been towed by mules along the canals, and pulled by then new steam tugboats on the Hudson River. He said they would’ve carried about 120 tons of various cargoes ranging from coal and iron to manufactured goods all across the state.

Cargo included the equipment of the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works, which passed through a network of canals, including the Erie Canal to reach Corning, kicking off a glassmaking boom, Batdorf said.

Below deck was a long narrow cargo hold and a few steps up were a small kitchen and two rooms with beds that was home for the crew.

“They were owned by a family,” Greg Banse, the museum’s marketing director, said.

BRIAN HUBERT — DAILY FREEMAN Lukas Milanak, left, of the Corning Museum of Glass shows off a finished dish called a compote before placing it in another oven to cool. Opening the oven is G Brian Juk.

Online: Additional photos and video from glass blowing demo appear with this story at WWW. DAILYFREEMAN.COM. Catherine Ayers of the Corning Museum of Glass places hot glass into glass crystals known as frit at the start of the process used to make a compote.