If you take the road from Palma to Valldemossa, at kilometer 11 you will come across the glassblowing workshop of the Tortella family. In the workshop, the sweat flows in streams from the faces of the glassblowers, when they use the "canya", the pipe, to get red-hot lumps of glass mass from the over 1000 degrees hot furnace, to then transform them by mouth blowing and molding into beautiful glass art.
"You can't waste a second; the colder the glass mass gets, the harder it is to work with," Miguel, who took over the old family business from his father ten years ago, tells us.
At the age of 23, Miguel started as an assistant in the workshop. At that time, the future of traditional glass manufactories on Mallorca looked rather bleak:
Hardly anyone wanted to learn the physically strenuous and highly demanding craft. Many furnaces of the once numerous, centuries-old glassblowing factories on Mallorca had already gone out and the famous, Mallorcan glass art threatened to become history.
With youthful courage and new ideas, Miguel nevertheless accepted the challenge and developed the manufactory into a creative hub of artists, designers and glassblowers on Mallorca.
One of the main objectives of the Manufacture was and still is the sustainable renewal of the tradition of glassblowing in Mallorca, which is more than a thousand years old. At that time, the Phoenicians brought the valuable material glass to the Balearic coasts with their trading ships.
Today, high-quality, natural mineral pigments make the glassware shine in bright colors and each piece is made from recycled waste glass from the local communities. Here, discarded bottles and other containers are given a second life as a Mallorcan work of glass art.
It goes without saying that everything about this glassblowing shop is in line with By Native's vision. We are proud to work with Miguel and the talented team in Esporles.
