Ignis Glass School

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Founded 1992 · Murano Tradition

Ignis
Glass
School

Fire Transforms. Art Endures. Master the disciplines of hot glass, lampwork and architectural glass from the world's most demanding furnace artists.

Explore Programs Our Story
34 Years of Fire
12 Gas-fired Furnaces
1,800+ Artists Trained
4 Glass Disciplines
Our Foundations

Glass as Discipline,
Fire as Teacher

The Gather & the Breath

Hot glass is gathered from the furnace at 1,100°C and shaped by breath, gravity and gravity alone. No moulds, no guides — only the intelligence of the glassblower working in real time with a material that never stays still.

Heat Control as Mastery

Understanding heat — where it lives in the glass, how it moves, how long you have before the material stops responding — is the core skill of every glass discipline. All technique flows from this fundamental knowledge.

Patience in a Hot Shop

A hot glass studio is no place for impatience. The material dictates its own rhythm. We cultivate a quality of attention in our students that applies far beyond the hot shop — a capacity to work with material truth rather than against it.

Disciplines

Four Paths
through Glass

Hot Glass Blowing
Hot Shop

Glass Blowing Intensive

The fundamental discipline: gather, blow, shape. Students learn to work at the furnace and glory hole, developing the physical intelligence and breath control required to shape molten glass into vessel and sculptural form.

8 Weeks · All Levels · 12 students max
Lampwork Studio
Flame Work

Lampworking Studio

The intimate counterpart to hot shop work: borosilicate rod and tube melted in an oxygen-propane torch, worked with precision at the scale of a jewellery workshop. The discipline of glass bead, scientific glass and botanical form.

6 Weeks · All Levels · Individual pace
Kiln Fusing
Kiln Work

Kiln Fusing & Slumping

Flat glass composition, layer fusion and mould-formed slumping. Students learn to design for the kiln — understanding compatibility, COE, kiln schedule and the behaviour of colour under heat — producing architectural and decorative glass works.

10 Weeks · Beginner friendly · Project-based
Architectural Glass
Advanced

Architectural Glass

Stained glass panel design, lead came construction, copper foil work (Tiffany method) and architectural specification. For students working toward gallery installation, commission work or the restoration of historic glass.

12 Weeks · Prior glass exp. · 8 students max
Marco Veltri — Master Glass Artist

Marco Veltri

Master Glassblower & Founding Director

Marco Veltri trained for eleven years on the island of Murano under Maestro Lorenzo Ferro, one of the last living masters of the Venetian cane and murrine traditions. He left Murano in 1991 to establish a school that would make these techniques accessible beyond the closed guild system — one that would teach the full physics of glass, not merely its surface secrets.

Trained under Maestro Lorenzo Ferro, Murano, Venezia — 1980–1991

Member of the Associazione Maestri Vetrai Muranesi

Work held in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass and the V&A London

UNESCO Craft Ambassador for glass arts, 2019–present

The Glass Path

How We Teach
the Hot Shop

01

Safety & the Language of Heat

The hot shop is a demanding environment. All students begin with an intensive safety orientation, learning to move with awareness, read the temperature of glass by colour and establish the habits that keep a furnace studio incident-free.

Days 1–3
02

The Gather: First Contact with Molten Glass

Students make their first gathers from the furnace, learning to control the blowpipe, find the centre of gravity and develop the initial physical intelligence of glassblowing — what it feels like when the glass is responding and when it is not.

Week 1
03

Form: Cylinder, Sphere & Vessel

The foundational forms of blown glass — cylinder, sphere, and the open vessel — are practised extensively before any decorative work begins. Consistent symmetry is the measure of technical readiness. We do not rush this stage.

Weeks 2–4
04

Colour: Frit, Cane & Murrine

Colour is applied to molten glass through coloured frit, pulled cane and prepared murrine. Students learn to add, control and design with colour in the hot shop environment — a skill that takes months to develop and years to master.

Weeks 5–7
05

Signature Work: Personal Studio Project

The final two weeks are devoted to a personal project — a series of works that demonstrate mastery of form, colour and the student's emerging artistic voice. These pieces are exhibited in the Ignis annual open studio.

Weeks 8–9
Our Timeline

Thirty Years
at the Furnace

1992

Founded in Prague

Marco Veltri establishes Ignis Glass School in a converted Baroque factory near the Vltava river, with three furnaces and a founding class of eight glassblowers drawn from across Eastern Europe.

2000

Lampworking Studio Opens

A dedicated lampworking studio is established alongside the hot shop — one of the first European institutions to offer both disciplines under the same roof with a common materials science curriculum.

2008

The New Furnace Hall

A purpose-built furnace hall is constructed, featuring six gas-fired furnaces, three glory holes, an annealing tunnel and a dedicated colour lab — among the finest dedicated glass teaching spaces in Europe.

2019

UNESCO Craft Partnership

Ignis Glass School is recognised as a UNESCO Craft Partnership institution, joining a global network of schools committed to the preservation and transmission of traditional craft knowledge.

2024

The Corning Exchange Programme

A formal annual exchange with the Corning Museum of Glass (New York) brings two Ignis faculty to Corning each summer and two Corning instructors to Prague — the first European-American institutional glass exchange of its kind.

Student Voices

What Our Students Say

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"Marco's teaching has a quality I cannot fully explain — he shows you something once, and it is as though your hands already knew it. The Ignis programme transformed not just my glass work but my entire relationship to making."

E

Eva Horváth

Hot Glass Graduate, Budapest
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"I came to Ignis as a complete beginner and left eight weeks later with a body of work I am proud to exhibit. The small cohort size means you receive genuine individual attention throughout the programme."

T

Thomas Beaumont

Glassblowing Student, London
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"The Architectural Glass programme gave me the technical foundation to begin taking commissions. The combination of historic technique and contemporary design thinking is exactly what working glass artists need."

N

Nadia Prentice

Architectural Glass Graduate, Cape Town
Step into the Hot Shop

Apply to Ignis

Applications for all programmes are accepted year-round. Hot Glass and Lampwork cohorts begin monthly. Kiln and Architectural Glass programmes begin quarterly.