Lebanon’s Last Glass Blower Gets Boost From Recycled Bottles

SARAFAND, Lebanon: With the oven ablaze melting shattered glass in the workshop and the nearby store abuzz with curious customers, it is hard to imagine that just a few months ago Lebanon’s last glass blower was about to close shop for good.

On a rainy Saturday afternoon the shop in the southern coast town of Sarafand was filled with admiring customers asking about the craftsmanship of the glass items at Khalife Brothers. The owner, Hussein Khalife, gladly shows them the ultra-high temperature oven where he and his family melt the glass, shape it into a ball, and then blow through a long tube to make items in various forms and colors. The craftsmen bask in the attention of customers who are there as much for the purchase as they are for the experience watching the process of glassblowing from start to finish.

The trade that had been passed down for hundreds of years from one generation to the next, giving a marketable skill to those who learned it, hadn’t been so good in recent years.

As a child Mr. Khalife learned the ancient art of glassblowing from his father, who always reminded his son of his duty to keep the legacy of glassblowing going. But the last year had gone by with nearly no sales. He thought that he had to face the inevitable closure of his business – the last of its kind in Lebanon and one of the few remaining in the Eastern Mediterranean, the birthplace of glassblowing.

Until the conflict broke out in Syria three years ago there were seven glassblowing workshops in operation, whose businesses have now been put on hold indefinitely.

Image from inside the store in Sarafand on the southern coast of Lebanon. Brooke Anderson

Last year Ziad Abichaker, founder of the environmental waste management company Cedar Environmental, came to the Lebanese glassblowers with a proposition: make glass products out of used bottles that would have sales points across Beirut. Mr. Abichaker worked with the glassblowers on developing more contemporary minimalist designs that would suit a more urban taste, a switch from the more ornate pieces the Khalifes had been making until now. He likes to describe the initiative as killing two birds with one stone: finding a use for Lebanon’s used beer bottles – that will divert around 12,000 beer bottles from landfills – and saving the country’s glass-blowing trade.

So far, the new blown glass pieces have proven a popular item – with 30 orders for just over $20,000 over a period of three months, a huge boost to the glass blower who had all but closed shop. Displayed prominently on the shelves of cafes around town, the glass lamps, cups and vases – and the story behind them – are appealing to customers in Beirut.

“The response has been wonderful, so I’m aware of the potential,” says Mr. Abichaker. “I’m really confident. When I get involved, I get involved for the long run. We’ll be there for at least the next five years.

Indeed this new shift in this ailing local industry is one of many that have taken place throughout its more than thousand-year-old history. The glassblowing workshops that once dotted the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean, eclipsing other glassmaking techniques of their day, spread throughout the Roman Empire, eventually reaching Europe, where it continues to be a fine art in Venice.

Today’s Lebanese glassmakers are now once again looking beyond their shores – Europe and the United States – to sell the items. There have already been 50 orders from Switzerland, a sign that there is indeed a foreign demand. Mr. Abichaker says he is thinking of selling them online, though he acknowledges that whatever pictures are posted won’t be the same thing that reaches the customer, since the tiny bubbles in the hand-blown glass always appears in different places each time a piece is made – no doubt a welcome flaw to those who appreciate hand-made crafts.

Back at the shop in Sarafand, customers ask the glassblowers if certain items are manufactured.

“No, everything we do is handmade,” says Nisrine Khalife, Hussein’s niece, whose job it is to hand-paint decorations on the glass items. “If it were manufactured then it would be ordinary. Every piece is different.”