Biot 2002

After Monaco, Eze Village, St. Paul de Vence, we slept last night in Antibes. It was a bargain basement hotel with more charm per Euro than anyplace we stayed (probably). Our destination for today is Cassis, but first we needed to backtrack a bit. We wanted to visit a glass blowing shop in Biot.

Biot was once the domain of the Knights Templar and was the main pottery town in the region until Picasso moved it after world War II. Now it's a picturesque village whose main claim to fame is the bubble-flecked glassware made there. The pictures below were taken in April 2002.

This is my favorite of these pictures. Consider it a still life, okay? It is the workbench used by the guy in the third photo. In it you can see the tools he uses and a piece of chalk he used to mark the completion of each piece. This was about 11:00 in the morning and so far he has "chalked up" 33 of them.
Here the pitcher is being extracted. It is literally "red" hot.
Here another glass artist is working on one step of the fabrication of a different piece. We watched him make this piece several times and it appears to be the only thing he does each day ... making the same piece over and over again.
Here a glass artist attached a glob of molten glass to the side of the pitcher and is getting ready blow it into a long thin pour spout. There were several artists working and each tended to specialize in one step of the fabrication of one kind of piece.