Hand Made

Each year, in their workshop open to the public, the glass blowers from the Biot Glassworks produce 500,000 pieces, each absolutely… unique!

By Jerôme Dumur - Photos La Verrerie de Biot - December 2, 2011

The Provencal tradition of glassmaking is age-old. How could it be otherwise in a region bursting with sunshine, where the light is, it’s said, one of the most beautiful in the world? For a long time the glassmakers lived in the Provençal pine groves. There, they found in abundance the wood necessary to heat their furnaces. On the other hand, sand, lime and sodium carbonate came from far away, on the back of a mule. There was plenty of work: cruets were needed for the olive oil, demijohns for the wine, oil lamps for lighting, bottles for perfume coming from Grasse… Alas! In the

beginning of the 20th century, electricity and the industrial revolution got the better of this flourishing craft. Aside from a handful of craftspeople scattered throughout the region, today a single stronghold defends the tradition of glassware “Made on the Riviera"-Biot. And what a fortress! This medieval burg today shelters a dozen glassmakers whose reputations have made the tour of the globe. Biot owes everything, in fact, to the passion and imagination of one man, Eloi Monod. By marrying a Biot local, this chemical engineer discovered the Provençal pottery that, back then, was the specialty of the village.

He had the idea to swap the clay for glass to produce glassware inspired by the local pottery’s ancestral forms. In 1956, in collaboration with an old glass blower that he brought out of retirement and a young apprentice who wanted only to learn, he established the Biot Glassworks. More than fifty years later, the company is still a reference.

It must be said that the Lechaczynski family, at the head of the business since the 70s, has remained faithful to the three golden rules laid down by Eloi Monod: authenticity, originality and diversity. The master glassblowers work by hand, blowing and working the glass in public to produce glasses, cups, jugs, plates, vases, dishes, chandeliers or

candle holders colored in green, Persian blue, golden yellow, lime, white, and desert rose… What do all these objects have in common: they’re made from bubbled glass, their own invention, without equivalent in the world, the result of sprinkling the molten glass with soda. The layers of glass enclose in this way infinite tiny bubbles. Elsewhere, this would be seen as a flaw, here it’s a signature!

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La Verrerie de Biot Chemin des Combes  06410 Biot
Tél. 04 93 65 03 00. www.verreriebiot.com

To see

The Biot Glassworks site is not uniquely dedicated to craft ware. They also create lots of art pieces. This takes place opposite the glassblowing workshop, in the International Glass Gallery building. Established in 1977, it hosts the very “contemporary” work of many international artists, well known or soon to be. Each year, throughout the summer, it also organizes the “Verriales,” a dense and talented themed exhibition, bringing together the works of about thirty artists. Marrying technical prowess with unbridled creativity, the works certainly won’t leave you indifferent.