№ — Field notes

On the business of glass.

Studies, essays and updates from the open record for glass.

What a hot shop costs to build and run, where the buyers are, what the registry's data says, and the tools we're building along the way. Everything under CC BY 4.0.

Get new studies by email

Latest · Theoretical studies · Oct 17, 2026 · 21 min read

Blowing Glass in Lima

Lima is an easy place to melt glass and a hard place to sell it — cheap piped gas, a mining economy that digs up every oxide in a glass batch, and a city of eleven million buying its glass from somewhere else. A hot shop here costs about $380,000 to build and $350,000 a year to run, and the constraint is not energy but demand.

A molten amber gather of glass on the end of a blowpipe