Glass Studio

The Hot Shop is equipped with a 1000 lbs. Spiral Arts glass furnace to keep glass ready to gather for glassblowing, hot sculpting and hot glass casting. The Hot Shop has 3 benches, with the option of a 12”, 18” and 21″ diameter gloryhole along with plenty of annealer space for a variety of sizes and quantity of work to be made in 4-hour time slots.

Pratt offers a full array of hand tools, pipes and punties as well as a garage, color box, powder booth, hot plate, pick-up box and oxygen/propane torches for use by students and access users. 

Hot glass casting is available on a very limited basis and is easiest to access in a class format to have the studio set-up and adequate team support ready to help. Hot glass casting is only available on Saturday nights with a maximum 4-day annealing cycle. 

Pratt currently hosts the Cascadia Cup Club in the Hot Shop monthly, a community gathering for making cups and networking with other glass artists and enthusiasts.  

The Hot Shop furnace is charged with Spruce Pine PWV96 batch. 

The Kiln Shop is for working with warm glass processes, such as fusing, slumping, painting on glass, stain-glass or kiln casting. The Kiln shop has a large table area for preparing work and a variety of kiln sizes and furniture to use for firing.  

• Kiln 1: 48” l x 24” w x 12” h 
• Kiln 2: 33” l x 22” w x 7” h 
• Kiln 3: 28” round x 9” h  
• Kiln 4: 24” round x 9” h  
• Kiln 5: 46” w x 24” d x 8” h 
• Kiln 6: 24” round x 12” h” 
• “Baby” Casting Kiln: 32” w x 27” d x 54” h [Casting only] 
• “Baby’s baby” Kiln: 14” l x 14” w x 6” h 

A variety of tools are available for use as well as a wide range of slumping molds for making functional wares and slumping shapes. If you are an access user, each kiln reservation includes 4-hours of studio time to prepare projects and the initial 24-hours for firing. Toxic or experimental materials are not allowed in the kilns; there is not a burnout kiln available in the glass studio, you must separately arrange this with the Metal Sculpture Studio. A moldmaking room is available for wax working and for preparing plaster/silica molds for casting including steamers for the lost wax processes.  

The Flame shop is dedicated to flameworking, or lampworking, the process of using an oxy/propane torch to melt and shape glass. The Flame Shop has space for up to 8 torch set-ups, with Nortel Minor, Major or Red Max torches available for working with borosilicate or soft glass. Students and access users are welcome to bring their own torch to use if it is equipped with quick connects. There are a variety of kilns available for different sized work and for beadmaking. For students, safety glasses, materials and tools are available for class use based on the technique you are learning. While there is adequate ventilation for flameworking, the studio does not allow fuming. 

Every Third Saturday evening of the month the Flame Shop hosts a community Flameworking Gathering for folks to network with each other, work at the torch and share ideas.  

The Cold Shop is a space dedicated to cutting, grinding, and polishing glass. Pratt’s Cold Shop is the only publicly accessible studio in Seattle. The cold shop is equipped with a wide range of professional equipment, such as: 7” and 14” saw, belt sander, 80 grit flat wheel, 220 grit flat wheel, diamond pad flat wheel, Spatzier engraving lathe, drill press and polishing lathe. Reservations can be made in 1-hour increments and the shop will allow for two coldworkers at a time unless it is a class format. Pratt also has two sandblasters, one dedicated exclusively for glass and the other shared with metal, the current grits are 100 and 150 aluminum oxide.