Illinois Glass Blower is Making The World’s Tallest Glass Christmas Tree

Back in 2016 I visited Jason Mack's glass blowing studio down in Champaign, Illinois to interview him for a class project. We had a ton of fun making small little pendants and figures.

He helped me make a small glass leaf and I was BEYOND impressed. So when I saw Jason working on a 31 FOOT TALL GLASS Christmas tree, I obviously had to know more.

But first things first, just check this thing out.

31 feet of hand spun glass, seems easy enough right? One of the coolest parts of this project is where the glass is coming from. It's all glass that has been donated to Jason by the community. He put out a call asking for clear and green glass, and the community SHOWED UP!

The tree site has boxes on boxes of donated glass. That donated glass goes into a furnace that heats it up to over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and that melted glass gets spun around and around. But obviously you can only walk in circles for so long before the whole 31 foot aspect catches up to you.

So that's when Jason thought, okay, I'll just put this furnace in the air on a fork lift, that should work right?

From step ladder -

To a furnace 20 ft in the air on a fork lift -

And the craziest part? It worked. And it worked really well. Jason is almost done with the 31 foot tall Christmas tree!