Celebrating 27 years · Handmade in Elora · Free local pickup and Canada-wide shipping
Celebrating 27 years · Handmade in Elora · Free local pickup and Canada-wide shipping
Our story · Elora, Ontario
Blown Away Glass Studio is Tim and Katherine McManus: two glass artists who met at Sheridan, opened a hotshop in Elora in 1999, and have worked the same furnace ever since. Everything that carries our name is made here, by our hands, from a paperweight to a chandelier hung across the country. This is the short version of how that came to be.
One furnace, in Elora
Glass artists
& widely featured
Just the two of us
The short version
We met as students at Sheridan, fell for the same impossible material, and decided to build a life around it. In 1999 we opened Blown Away in Elora, a small working hotshop with a gallery beside it, and we have been here ever since. Twenty-seven years on, it is still just the two of us at the furnace, Tim and Katherine, gathering, blowing and shaping every piece by hand. We have made wedding gifts and memorial keepsakes, one-of-a-kind sculpture, and lighting installed in homes and buildings across North America. And along the way we have taught thousands of people who had never held a blowpipe how to make something molten of their own.
The work
Our days move between very different kinds of work, and we love that. One morning it is a commission for a designer, the next a memorial piece for a family, the next a room full of first-timers finding their feet at the furnace.
One-of-a-kind blown glass, in the gallery and shipped across Canada.
Custom lighting, designed, made and installed across North America.
Memorial keepsakes and cremation jewellery, made by hand for people and pets.
Along the way
We are award-winning glass artists, and our work has been featured on CBC’s Rick Mercer Report, on the children’s series Making Stuff, and in GuelphToday. Closer to home, we are based in Elora, named among Canada’s Top 20 Small Art Towns, and in 2016 we were recognised at the Royal Ontario Museum as artists who helped shape a generation of glass artists.
As seen on
CBC
Mercer Report
Rick Mercer learns to blow glass with Tim & Katherine, Elora, ON
Visit
The best way to understand what we do is to see it. The gallery is open year-round, the hotshop runs most days, and you are welcome to stand and watch glass being made. Come and say hello.
Tell us the class and dates you’d like and we’ll confirm availability by email.
Cancellation & refund policy: All classes / workshops / teambuildings / parties / events are non-refundable and non-transferrable. You will lose 50% of the full amount if you cancel your workshop within 2 weeks of date confirmed. The other 50% can be put towards another class or on pieces already for sale in the gallery. If you cancel within 2 days or miss your class no refund will be issued. Classes expire after 2 years of purchase date.
