Welcome to the glassblower’s workshop at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim - Norway’s biggest university. Currently, NTNU has about 42.000 students and 7.500 employees.

History

The scientific glassblowing workshop at NTNU was founded in the 1960s as an institute-workshop at the institute for physics. After a while the workshop was put under the administration of the faculty of natural sciences. The customers are mainly from NTNU, but orders from external research institutions are also accepted.

Present day

The workshop has two full-time scientific glassblowers, Sebastian Bete and Astrid Salvesen, who is the head of department. Their paths to glassblowing have been somewhat different.

Astrid has always been fascinated by glass as a material, how one can transform and shape such a solid material with the help of heat. As a 16yo she dreamed of becoming an arts and crafts furnace worker, but at that time no one in Norway was taking apprentices. After a few years, there was an opportunity for starting as an apprentice at the university’s scientific glassblowing workshop right in her hometown of Trondheim. Since 1980 Astrid has been employed at the university, serving as head of the workshop for the last 21 years

Sebastian had originally planned to become a goldsmith. But right before starting his goldsmith apprenticeship, he got the opportunity of a work experience placement/internship at Schott in Mainz.

During the internship he discovered his fascination for glass, and in 1997 he became an apprentice scientific glassblower.

After the apprenticeship, he worked for several employers (both in production and research environments) in Germany, Switzerland and the UK, before he settled in Norway in 2006. He worked for a small company further south in Norway before he accepted a position as a stand-in for Astrid at NTNU for a few months. He became a permanent employee at NTNU in 2012.

As for today the workshop has sufficient capacity with two employees, but there will probably be need for a new glassblower when Astrid retires in 3-4 years. Planning ahead already today, they consider how to accomplish that - take an apprentice, or employ an experienced glassblower?

Teaching an apprentice is a very time-consuming task for a small workshop, and it would be very demanding keeping the normal operation running at the same time. It seems it would be most advisable to employ an experienced scientific glassblower. Time will tell.

Tasks and challenges – make what is needed

NTNU’s workshop is a typical university glass workshop. The tasks are extremely varied, which provides new and interesting challenges almost every day. Customers usually come with a requirement and a rough idea of what they need. But, as most fellow glassblowers know, they may have limited knowledge of glass, qualities, components and possibilities. 

Together with the customer, the parts are designed to fit their actual requirements. In other words, build what they need, not necessarily what they thought they needed. A good portion of the work is the production of specially designed equipment and prototypes, but occasionally they also make small series of items, and of course they do repairs. The university has two big research hubs that use a lot of quartz in their experiments, and about 50% of the items produced here are in quartz. That means that tools and machinery are well suited for the higher demands of quartz glass.