How crystal was born
Around a stemware, a bud or any piece of crystal there is a world where each person involved in the process of production plays his own part: you may find glass-blowers, grinders, engravers and others who are all at the base of the production of crystal. Each one signs his own object and actively takes part in the final result working with patience, carefulness and accuracy.
To produce crystal, the stove must reach a steady temperature of 1400° and the required substances are siliceous sand, lead oxide, boric acid, and arsenic anhydride and antimony oxide.
If you want to obtain coloured crystal, you have to add a little bit of silicon for the pink, cadmium for the red, cobalt for the blue, copper oxide for the green, while adding manganese oxide you may obtain a deep violet.
Gold colour changes into ruby red, cryolite into milk white, sulphur and cadmium resins change into amber while sodium urate gives opaque green.
It is not enough to melt these substances to obtain a good crystal at 24% of plumb. In Colle it took many years of experimentation to be able to obtain, besides the sonorous and the crystal glass, a clear and bright product such as handworks from other famous areas of Europe. Indeed crystal is not a simple chemical recipe. This is not enough to explain the mystery of change of the incandescent mass into a fragile, transparent and bright object obtained after having undergone the phases of production and whose only main character is the glass maker, who is able to change raw materials into a stemware, a jug or a pot/vase of many shapes.
The basic unity of work is the factory.
Until some time ago only a group of 11 workers used to carry out the work, that group is now reduced to only 4 or 5 people, where each one has his own task. These workers used to take out the incandescent liquid from the stove and transform it into an object of crystal.
The teamwork must be precise and co-ordinated like the gearing of a Swiss watch as any little displacement during the processing of crystal among the members of the team may ruin the product.
Humility, precision, concentration and co-ordination are basic.
Formerly tasks were clearly divided: there were the portantino, the serraforme,
the passagambi, the girapareson, the staccatore, the levapiedi, the levagambi, the levapareson, the attaccapiedi, the attagambi, the soffiapareson.
Before the accession of computer there were people able to check the exact temperature of the flame without the use of thermometer: this was also a sort of specialisation that made the difference.
The world of glassmakers was made up of rules, balance, hierarchies and times that were to be respected.
Once this kind of job used to be handed down from father to son.
The most traditional product for the market is the so-called "a calici", which are the typical stem consisting of a goblet and a stem.
At each passage from one hand to another, the piece assumes step by step its final shape: a fine and transparent wineglass.
Some workers have been replaced with small equipment but the importance of the market has not changed: it is still guided by the chief master who takes decisions about the quantity of crystal to be drawn from the kiln, on the basis of the article being produced.
This is the task of the “levapareson” who passes the cane with the piece of incandescent substance to the soffiapareson(chief master), who prepares and models it on the basis of the dimensions it should assume by means of a small spool called “maiosca”.
When the glass is still incandescent, it is put in the die tightened by the serraforme.
The soffiapareson blows while, at a precise signal, the serraforme gives it shape.
The pareson (the stem) is then ready to be passed to the attaccagambi.
Next to him there is the girapareson, who impresses a slow and steady rotation. At the top of the pole the pareson has a uniform cooling effect and gives space to his mate to stick the stem at a precise moment.At that moment the levagambi extracts a ball of glass from the kiln to be used to shape the stem which must assume the size of a cigarette and he takes it to the attaccagambi chief who connects it to the pareson through pliers.The piece passes again to the girapareson for a further cooling, after that the passagambi takes the and the pareson through the rod and takes it to the attaccapiedi chief while the “levapiedi” has provided the right quantity of melted glass for the foot that is drawn by a rope. The shape of the foot is made on a special-sized gnacchera made of sorb and cherry tree. When the goblet is ready it’s the turn of the staccatore who checks if both that the stem stands up right and the foot is flat.
After that he refines and removes it while the portantino takes it to the tempera: a machinery made of a roller that moves the piece on a tape.
By now the stem has reached a temperature of about 150-200 degrees, which is abruptly restored to 350-400 degrees depending on the thickness. The piece is then cooked again and cooled during the extremely slow process, which will determine the resistance and the purity of the product. Once the goblet is out of the tempera it has to be scalottato. To do that, there is a machinery that removes the crystal calotte that was set as a handle for the workers during the delicate phases of manufacture. A pointed diamond marks the point of the circumference to be cut.

The line drawn by the diamond is put under a pointed gas flame so as the calotte is removed and the stem is then levelled and smoothed, the so-called “filetto”- the slightly heightened edge - is created. Sandpaper is passed on the glass.
At the end of the process it must be put in the bruciatrice which remelts the little edge and every residue is removed. The goblet is so ready to be sold. The incandescent mass of crystal doesn’t only take the shape of a goblet, but the glass-makers chiefs can also create innumerable objects like the above-mentioned cruet which not only requires the stem blowing and the realisation of a long stem and a steady foot; but also precision and sensitiveness to model the spout and the handle of the cruet using pincers, always observing the original pattern.
The bigger the object is, more difficult the process of working becomes, as it is hard to check the pliable mass of crystal.
Skill and strength are necessary to blow and mould substances through the action of rotation. To give the desired shape to crystal pots requires quickness of movement and firmness, as the temporary fluidity of crystal does not allow any uncertainty. To obtain one of the most famous crystals of the Vilca, that is the horse, symbol of Colle Val d’Elsa, you must be a real artist.
After having moulded the neck, you carefully create the head of the horse, which takes the shape of the horse’s muzzle by means of strong strokes of spatula.
After that a mane of incandescent substance is juxtaposed and worked by the craftsman master.
Each detail is created by the master’s hands who forges his piece of work through infinite patience.


Vilca S.a.s. di Brogi & C.- Via Fratelli Bandiera, 53 - Casella Postale 206
53034 Colle di Val d’Elsa (Siena) Italy
tel. 0(39) 577 929188 - fax 0(39) 577 929876
e-mail: vilca@vilca.it - web: www.vilca.it