I've never seen glass blowing before, so I was excited to see that they have a daily demonstration that started just as we arrived. We watched as the man grabbed a blob of glass from the fire, dipped it in powder (that's how they color the glass) and shape, blow and reshape the glass until it was big enough. He grabbed a new piece of molten glass, colored it and carefully wrapped the contrasting colored glass around the original piece. The resulting zig-zag stripe was beautiful. Next he put it in a form that gave it a star kind of shape, cut the end off and spun it until the top of the vase opened and fanned out nicely. Cutting the end was neat too, he scored it then added a few drops of water then gave it a tap and it cracked right off perfectly.
The upper floor is dedicated to the history of Licking County, which I thought would be super boring. I was wrong, it was impressive! The B & O railroad used to run to Licking County's major train station and the kids were intrigued with the scale model on display. I loved that they had a circle track that would spin to access about 20 different garages, some with floors that would cut away so that the trains could be repaired from underneath.
My dad once told me that they used to take x-rays of your feet just to see if your shoes fit. It sounded so unbelievable to me, but here they actually have the machine that was used!
The little kids play area has lots of dress up clothes to go with the different stations- a firetruck, ice cream shop, farmer's market, and puppet play theatre.
No comments:
Post a Comment