The art of Glassblowing is both ancient and amazing. It has been traced to civilizations dating back some 3000 years. Legend has it that the first to create glass were Phoenician sailors. Their glass was very crude but beautiful and useful nonetheless. Artistic glassblowing as we know it today is still done in the same traditions and techniques that were developed by the Italians of Venice and Murano during the 14th century Renaissance. Glass is first created from raw materials such as sand or silica, which is the basis of all glass, and other elements including potash, soda, and various metal oxides for coloring. This recipe or "batch" is then mixed and poured into a furnace and heated to temperatures sometimes exceeding 2500 degrees Farenheight. The glass becomes molten and thus allows the artist to "gather" the glass on a long steel blowpipe. He then uses various tools and techniques to blow vases or other ornamental objects of beauty. Almost any shape is possible, limited only by the artist's imagination and level of experience. Some glass artists will gather the glass from the furnace and stretch it out into long rods or "canes". These canes are then cut into shorter lengths that the artist will reheat in a torch in order to create more intricate and detailed figurines. This technique today is called "torch working" or "lampworking" as it was called in days of old before the advent of compressed gasses. An oil lamp was used with a bellows attached for pumping air into the flame in order to super-heat it enough to melt the glass. The master glass artists of Arribas Brothers at Walt Disney have been demonstrating these techniques to the guests in all of the Disney parks around the world for more than 30 years. They are proud of their rich traditions and of the quality workmanship that has been recognized around the globe as second to none.