Martha's Vineyard Glassworks in West Tisbury is not far from where I was renting a cottage during my recent vacation on the island. Every day, they write on a chalkboard sign out front to let people know what they are making. One day while I was there, the sign said Pumpkin! Pumpkins! Pumpkins!

Just in time for Mabon and Samhain!

It was fascinating to watch.

Taking the molten globs of glass from the fire at the end of a long, hollow metal wand, one of the pumpkin makers blows the glass, dips it into a ribbed cylinder, and then holds the pointy corner of a steel square against the bottom as he twirls the wand. After a few seconds of this, the glass curls in and flattens at the bottom to become the shape of a pumpkin. The pumpkin is placed on a thick bed of cotton batting and snipped from the wand at the top. A second pumpkin maker has a thin piece of molten glass on another metal wand, which he has just spun through a pile of different colored green glass glitter. He plops the glass on the top of the pumpkin, pulls it up like taffy, cuts it with pliers and then twists it around to form the spiral stem. Voila! A pumpkin is born.

The newborn pumpkin goes in a big metal cabinet with the rest of the day's creations. They have to cool for 14 hours before they can be handled and sold. The pumpkin makers tell me to come back the next morning around 11 because, despite what the saleswoman told me about getting pumpkins in the afternoon, they'll be out in the late morning - and they won't last long!

Sure enough, the next morning at 11:30 the Glassworks is filling up with pumpkin seekers. Word is out and it's that time of year! They only make them once for the season and then they're gone until next Autumn comes. At that early hour there are still plenty to go around. Elegant clear glass in traditional pumpkin oranges with bright green corkscrew tops. Funky pink pumpkins with purple stems. Harlequin pumpkins. Polka-dot pumpkins. And beautiful pumpkins with marbles and bubbles and speckles. Oh my!

I deliberate, but finally choose a pumpkin that is traditional orange in clear glass as a base but shot through with drops and veins of opaque bits and darker purple. They wrap it up in tissue for me and I carry it out amidst the other deliberations and happy choices going on around me.

On my way down the driveway, I stop to snap a photo of a witch ball peeking out from behind the grass at the edge of a flower bed.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:28 PM