Completely outside the box

[Brian]

Gona have to keep my boy away from the house of marbles site, have you seen the price of some of that stuff!!!

[JerryMort]

Handmade or handcrafted tends to mean 'not machine made'. You can have handmade blown glass or machine made blown glass. There are a number of places in this country where you can see glass objects being made, e.g. www.houseofmarbles.com where they have a gallery so that you can look down on them making things. A lot of the work in making a piece of blown glass is handwork, rolling the tube with the glass on the end along an edge to get it even, swinging it to change the shape, rolling it on an edge with something held against the hot glass to make indentations and so on. Fascinating to watch. House of Marbles do a course so you can have a go yourself. Jerry.

[Nicholas Ball]

yes it is still blown glass, I suppose if it is blown by mouth, it would now be called  'Traditional' blown glass

[Joerg]

We just refered to it as blown-glass.

Having watched a programme not too long ago on China, they now use tubes and air compressors to blow the air, so the old traditions are slowly being lost.

@Nick, but nevertheless it is still blown-glass, isn't it?
J.

[Nicholas Ball]

When I was a wee nipper many moons ago  ( there's a bit of old English linguistics to get your head around

We use to watch these guys at the seaside towns making animals. We just refered to it as blown-glass.

Having watched a programme not too long ago on China, they now use tubes and air compressors to blow the air, so the old traditions are slowly being lost.

[Joerg]

This is a question to enlighten me the approach to that mysterious  English language; it has nothing to do with flat figures:

Some time ago my wife and me got a set of liquor glasses, made in China.
It was labelled "handcrafted in China" (or may be "handmade").

I know, that glass items in the past (and in limited numbers even now) are made by BLOWING into the very hot liquid glass
(I myself did it years ago).
Therefore the German word is "mouth-blown" for these items.

Now my question: Is this "blowing-into-the-hot-glass" in English really described as "hand-made"?
Or is there a word in the vicinity of "mouth-blown"?

Thank for for your patience with an linguistic mole!
Joerg