ODUMASE-KROBO, GHANA, April 11 (Reuters) – Michael Tetteh, Ghana’s solely skilled glassblower, clenched his tooth as he gripped a red-hot ball of molten glass, his burned and blistered palms naked in opposition to the steaming stack of moist newspaper he used to guard them.
The 44-year-old toiled within the warmth of scrap-metal kilns burning at almost 1,500 Celsius (2,700 Fahrenheit), pregnant with melted windowpanes, TV screens and soda bottles he would quickly rework into elaborate vases swirling with psychedelic color. Some turn into crimson vases with streaks of black, different inexperienced pitchers and a few clear, on a regular basis bottles.
“Glass… is my ardour, my coronary heart,” he stated. “It is like life. It takes you on a journey from one (stage) to a different.”
Tetteh’s strict use of recycled supplies, which he collects from scrap yards and landfills within the capital Accra, is a part of a said mission to scale back Ghana’s glass waste and what he considers wasteful imports.
He envisions a Ghana freed from international glass, having channelled its glass bead-making custom into a contemporary, multi-faceted business.
Ghana imports round $300 million in glass and ceramic merchandise every year, in response to the Observatory for Financial Complexity. Greater than 80% of that comes from China, the world’s high glass exporter.
Glassblower Janet Offei, 28, holds a chunk of glassware produced at Michael Tetteh’s glassware manufacturing workshop in Krobo Odumase, Ghana March 18, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Kokoroko
Whereas some personal corporations recycle their glass, Tetteh says the vast majority of the Ghana’s glass waste finally ends up both in landfills or scattered all through the nation’s streets, posing a security hazard.
“We do not have a (glass waste) assortment course of, and we do not need damaged glass flowing round like that,” he stated. “If we use recycled (supplies), we are able to earn money.”
Hailing from the city of Odumase-Krobo, the epicentre of Ghana’s conventional glass bead tradition, Tetteh found glassblowing in 2012 after spending a number of months in France and the Netherlands studying the craft with different Ghanaian bead-makers.
He was alone in his need to proceed upon returning dwelling, and set a aim to determine a correct sizzling store in Odumase-Krobo.
Undeterred by lack of finance, he constructed furnaces from scrap-metal and clay utilizing on-line tutorials. He fine-tuned his talents watching YouTube movies of well-known glass artists like America’s Dale Chihuly.
He has since employed a number of younger assistants from Odumase-Krobo, who he’s coaching and hopes will at some point run their very own workshops. Their work may be present in boutique outlets in Ghana and Ivory Coast, and has appeared in European and American artwork galleries.
“My coronary heart (needs) to coach younger Ghanaians, each women and men, to allow them to be taught this job,” he stated. “We won’t need to go to different international locations like China to purchase what we would like for Ghana.”
Reporting by Cooper Inveen and Francis Kokoroko
Modifying by Bate Felix and Lisa Shumaker
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