The first season of Blown Away has proven a massive hit since it dropped on Netflix on Friday, July 12th, adding it to the streaming service’s long list of successful shows.
This first-of-its-kind glass blowing competition sees ten masters of glass compete for a mega prize: $60,000 and an artists’ residency spot at the Corning Museum of Glass.
But just where and how did they manage to create a huge glass workshop for the competition?
Read on to find out everything you need to know about Blown Away’s filming locations, how they built the Hot Shop and more.
Where is the Hot Shop in Blown Away?
All the filming for the first season of Blown Away takes place in a ‘Hot Shop’ they created, especially for the show.
This hot shop is really an abandoned warehouse that Marblemedia – the production team behind Blown Away – found in the city of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada.
It’s no surprise then that three of the contestants in the first season – Benjamin Kikkert, Patrick Primeau and Leah Kudel – are all from Canada.
How did they build the Hot Shop?
The construction of the show’s hot shop would’ve taken a while. It’s now the largest glassblowing studio in the whole of North America.
The size of the hot shop reflects the nature of the craft.
Glassblowing requires a variety of large-scale equipment. Two large furnaces are built for glass melting, whereas there are ten reheating furnaces – which they manage to call ‘glory holes’ with a straight face – for each contestant. There is also studio space for each individual on the show, so you can imagine they needed a lot of space!
To help with the design and construction of the show’s hot shop, they roped in the Craft and Design Glass studio from Toronto’s Sheridan College.
Students from Sheridan College also participate in the show as assistants to the artists.
What will happen to the Hot Shop – season 2?
If Netflix commissions another series of Blown Away – which we hope they would after the success of the show – we assume they would return to season 1’s hot shop.
It’s not like they can really just knock up another one of those…
Until they film another, it is unconfirmed what they are doing with the Blown Away hot shop.
WATCH BLOWN AWAY SERIES 1 ON NETFLIX NOW.
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