Bubbles in the Glass

April 2014

The Glass Maker tells his story.  He stands in the middle of the disused factory and recalls the time in Burma when he was a boy and his grandfather was blowing glass.  His eyes are wide and wistful as he talks of his trade; his laughter sudden as he gestures to the abandoned machinery and fragments of glass that litters his family’s property.

There are glass vessels hidden and emerging along pathways dense with overgrown foliage.  Shafts of sunlight cut through the skeletal frame of old buildings to rebound from coloured fragments of glass pieces.  Some of what can be discovered is an offcut, some is whole: all is dusty, dirty and achingly beautiful.

“Do you see these bubbles in the glass?” asks the Glass Maker, bending slowly to retrieve a goblet from the dirt.   “They are not meant to be there”.

“I like them”, I smile.

“Yes” chuckles the Glass Maker.  “We say that the bubbles hold the soul of the Maker, do you see?”  He looks directly at me.  “So there is a little piece of the Maker in every glass that is made”.

 Photography by Ben McLachlan in Yangon, Myanmar; March 2014, reprinted with permission.