13
Mar
The Briq, The Cultural Symbol of Lebanon
Patricia Nabti, Ph.D. wrote for HOME magazine:
Most of the glass briqs in Lebanon are not made by artisanal glassblowers. In Tripoli, Golden Glass is one of the last companies to mass produce glass briqs. The company has a number of glassblowers who make the briqs on 30-minute rotations. The glassblower first takes a carefully measured blob of
molten glass on a glass blowing rod, and places it into the middle of an open mold. He deftly closes the two halves of the mold with his feet and blows into the rod to have the molten glass take the shape of the briq. It only takes a few seconds to harden the glass enough to remove it from the mold, red hot, but cooled enough to retain its shape. After the briq is crafted with the spout and handle, the hot glass briq is transferred by a special fork-ended rod to a conveyor belt where it gradually cools, and then it is placed into a packing box at the other end. While the mold assures the standardization of the basic shape of the briq, the lip, handle and spout are only as consistent as the individual glassblower can make them. The whole process takes about two minutes for each briq to be made, and the output is about 200 briqs per day.
Exclusive photoshoot for HOME Magazine by Zakaria Rakha
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13 March 2019
