The sustainable glassblower on a mission to free his country of foreign glass
- Michael Tetteh, Ghana’s only professional glassblower, recycles scrap glass – drinks bottles, TV screens – by turning it into elaborate vases full of colour
- He envisions a Ghana free of foreign glass, having channelled its tradition of making glass beads into a modern, multifaceted industry
Michael Tetteh, Ghana’s only professional glassblower, clenched his teeth as he gripped a red-hot ball of molten glass, his burned and blistered hands bare against the steaming stack of wet newspaper he used to protect them.
The 44-year-old toiled in the heat of scrap-metal kilns burning at nearly 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), pregnant with melted windowpanes, TV screens and drinks bottles he would soon transform into elaborate vases swirling with psychedelic colour.
Some become red vases with streaks of black, other green pitchers and some clear, everyday bottles.
“Glass… is my passion, my heart,” he said. “It’s like life. It takes you on a journey from one [stage] to another.”
Tetteh’s strict use of recycled materials, which he collects from scrapyards and landfills in the capital Accra, is part of a stated mission to reduce Ghana’s glass waste and what he considers wasteful imports.
