The show piggybacked onto a resurgence in popularity for handmade glass. Some were even inspired to try it themselves: glassblowing schools like UrbanGlass in Brooklyn saw an uptick in bookings from people who had watched Blown Away and decided to try their hand (and lungs). People for whom glass had never meant more than a drinking vessel found themselves suddenly captivated by the sight of this alien molten material being puffed and twisted into strange and beautiful shapes. It never occurred to me it would fuel interest.”īut there was more to the show’s appeal than its memeability. “But it was like, well, that’s what they’re called. “When we were making the show there were a few snickers in the edit suite” producer Matt Hornburg tells me, over the phone from his home in Ontario, of the colourful term.
Vulture named it “your go-to summer reality competition” and #gloryhole (the technical term for the plus-1000℃ degree furnace in which the glass is melted) became an instant Twitter trend. The first season landed with little fanfare in July in the midst of the pandemic but it soon developed something of a cult following. “You’re about to be blown away” puns the dramatically cheesy opening voiceover, which introduces the viewer to a competition format that takes 10 artists, one enormous abandoned warehouse in Canada, and a hefty dose of dramatic string music, to find the very best… glassblower. Thank goodness they did, for without him, Netflix’s least likely sounding hit of the last six months would lack its latest super star. But in the end, my girlfriend and my studio assistant pushed me over the final hurdle to do the application.” It meant putting yourself out into the world in quite a direct way and I’m fairly introverted and have never been that competitive. “By nature, it’s not the sort of thing I’d normally go for. “I was so reluctant to apply, it was everyone around me who was trying to nudge me into it” he tells me over the phone from his studio outside Hertford. The self-described “random Brit” amongst a predominantly American contestant pool, he found himself squeaking in an application just under the deadline. Elliot Walker, the 32-year-old British artist and winner of season two of Blown Away, Netflix’s bizarre and addictive glassblowing contest, came very close to not applying to be on the show at all.
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