In a cavernous brick warehouse on a quiet block in Brooklyn, N.Y., a woman kneels near a row of furnaces that heave with glowing orange flames.
She twists a thin metal pole topped with a pumpkin-colored glob, watching it intensely as it rotates, as if calculating a complex math problem in her head. "Blow!" Michiko Sakano shouts suddenly, her brow furrowed and gleaming with sweat after repeated trips to the "glory hole," a hulking inferno that heats glass for shaping.
At the other end of the pipe, her assistant for the day, Amber Cowan, caps her mouth around the stainless steel and puffs into the 870-degree Celsius lump as Sakano guides it into shape with huge tongs. "Blow hard!" she yells again, then heaves the pole upward for another dip into the fire.