A World of Calm (2020) s01e02 Episode Script
The Glassmaker
The sands that drift across our world
hold a secret.
Over the centuries,
we have learned that these golden grains
can be magically transformed.
This is a story
of an artist
who turned sand
into glass
creating wonderous objects
inspired by nature.
They say
she can capture the wind.
The wind has a special purpose
as it blows across the flat lands
of the Netherlands.
Centuries ago,
the Dutch became a
nation of wind catchers,
harnessing its power.
It's here
that Bibi lives,
a glassmaker famed
for an act of magic.
Inside her creations,
she conjures the wind.
In her workshop,
she follows the ancient process
of glassmaking
Each step
calling upon
one of nature's primal elements:
air
and earth
water
and fire.
She begins by placing
sand in her furnace.
Fire
is the frontier that changes everything.
The texture of molten glass
is extraordinary.
It is neither a solid
nor a liquid.
Bibi likens it to honey.
Inside her crucible
you can hear the last grains of sand
slowly transforming into glass.
Nature has its own furnaces.
Inside these wonderous rivers
flow currents of silver and gold
But the richest ingredient by far
is silica,
the crystal building blocks of glass.
In Hawaii,
these streams are said to embody
the island's goddess
of fire and creation
Pele-honua-mea.
Pele-honua-mea
is also a goddess
of the wind,
and as she blows across
the silica rich lava,
dark volcanic glass
is formed.
Around the world,
the wind breathes life
into nature,
and for Bibi,
it is an irresistible challenge
to catch hold of its playful spirit.
The next element in her process
is air.
Through a hollow pipe,
Bibi's apprentice
delivers a gentle breath.
As it's infused with air,
the glassmaker's creation
begins to take shape.
As she spins the glass,
Bibi imagines the wind in
every shimmering strand.
Still at hundreds of degrees,
these threads fuse
into the surface of the glass
Creating textures and distortions
that will eventually play with the light.
As the hours pass,
she returns the glass to the furnace
The heat allowing it to be further shaped
and transformed.
Curiously,
all molten glass looks the same.
Only as it cools
do the true colors begin to emerge.
In the heat of her evolving creation,
Bibi senses the deep hues
and radiance of a sunrise.
Some say the earliest glass on Earth
was created by accident.
As Arabian nomads
journeyed across the desert,
their campfires may well
have fused and transformed the sands
on which they burned.
Pieces of glass
found in nature
are often dark and clouded,
colored by the elements
from which they were forged.
Desert glass
is the color of burnished sand.
Creating glass as colorless
and invisible as the wind
would take ancient glassmakers
centuries to perfect
But the results would be sublime.
Water is the glassmaker's final element.
In Renaissance Venice,
a guild glassblowers
lived on the nearby island of Murano.
For generations they worked in secret
in search of completely
new type of glass.
Perhaps seeking to capture
the reflections around their workshops,
they were the first
to invent cristallo
Glass,
breathtaking in its purity.
Their secret was adding
powders of manganese
to their furnaces
to remove the colors
and impurities within sand.
They created a glass as translucent
as the water
and the wind.
The secrets of clear glass
would eventually escape
the waterways of Venice
Carried by merchants
across the trade routes of Europe
to the artisans and workshops
of the Netherlands.
Fire and air,
water and earth
each element has played its part
in Bibi's process.
In the last moments with her creation,
she studies its contours
and makes final adjustments to its shape.
As the glass finally cools,
the perfect clarity she sought
slowly emerges.
She smooths away imperfections.
Like the wind,
it has no true color.
Instead, it does something remarkable:
it absorbs the colors around it.
With the elements,
Bibi has transformed glass
into the essence of the wind.
The way it moves over the water
The way it flows across the land
The way
it shapes our world.
hold a secret.
Over the centuries,
we have learned that these golden grains
can be magically transformed.
This is a story
of an artist
who turned sand
into glass
creating wonderous objects
inspired by nature.
They say
she can capture the wind.
The wind has a special purpose
as it blows across the flat lands
of the Netherlands.
Centuries ago,
the Dutch became a
nation of wind catchers,
harnessing its power.
It's here
that Bibi lives,
a glassmaker famed
for an act of magic.
Inside her creations,
she conjures the wind.
In her workshop,
she follows the ancient process
of glassmaking
Each step
calling upon
one of nature's primal elements:
air
and earth
water
and fire.
She begins by placing
sand in her furnace.
Fire
is the frontier that changes everything.
The texture of molten glass
is extraordinary.
It is neither a solid
nor a liquid.
Bibi likens it to honey.
Inside her crucible
you can hear the last grains of sand
slowly transforming into glass.
Nature has its own furnaces.
Inside these wonderous rivers
flow currents of silver and gold
But the richest ingredient by far
is silica,
the crystal building blocks of glass.
In Hawaii,
these streams are said to embody
the island's goddess
of fire and creation
Pele-honua-mea.
Pele-honua-mea
is also a goddess
of the wind,
and as she blows across
the silica rich lava,
dark volcanic glass
is formed.
Around the world,
the wind breathes life
into nature,
and for Bibi,
it is an irresistible challenge
to catch hold of its playful spirit.
The next element in her process
is air.
Through a hollow pipe,
Bibi's apprentice
delivers a gentle breath.
As it's infused with air,
the glassmaker's creation
begins to take shape.
As she spins the glass,
Bibi imagines the wind in
every shimmering strand.
Still at hundreds of degrees,
these threads fuse
into the surface of the glass
Creating textures and distortions
that will eventually play with the light.
As the hours pass,
she returns the glass to the furnace
The heat allowing it to be further shaped
and transformed.
Curiously,
all molten glass looks the same.
Only as it cools
do the true colors begin to emerge.
In the heat of her evolving creation,
Bibi senses the deep hues
and radiance of a sunrise.
Some say the earliest glass on Earth
was created by accident.
As Arabian nomads
journeyed across the desert,
their campfires may well
have fused and transformed the sands
on which they burned.
Pieces of glass
found in nature
are often dark and clouded,
colored by the elements
from which they were forged.
Desert glass
is the color of burnished sand.
Creating glass as colorless
and invisible as the wind
would take ancient glassmakers
centuries to perfect
But the results would be sublime.
Water is the glassmaker's final element.
In Renaissance Venice,
a guild glassblowers
lived on the nearby island of Murano.
For generations they worked in secret
in search of completely
new type of glass.
Perhaps seeking to capture
the reflections around their workshops,
they were the first
to invent cristallo
Glass,
breathtaking in its purity.
Their secret was adding
powders of manganese
to their furnaces
to remove the colors
and impurities within sand.
They created a glass as translucent
as the water
and the wind.
The secrets of clear glass
would eventually escape
the waterways of Venice
Carried by merchants
across the trade routes of Europe
to the artisans and workshops
of the Netherlands.
Fire and air,
water and earth
each element has played its part
in Bibi's process.
In the last moments with her creation,
she studies its contours
and makes final adjustments to its shape.
As the glass finally cools,
the perfect clarity she sought
slowly emerges.
She smooths away imperfections.
Like the wind,
it has no true color.
Instead, it does something remarkable:
it absorbs the colors around it.
With the elements,
Bibi has transformed glass
into the essence of the wind.
The way it moves over the water
The way it flows across the land
The way
it shapes our world.