April 2015

Strong to the Finish

Cape Cod Life  /  April 2015 /

Writer: Emily Penn

Strong to the Finish

April 2015

Cape Cod Life  /  April 2015 /

Writer: Emily Penn

The awards feature minor design differences from year to year, but most consist of a striking combination of cobalt blue and clear glass, with the participant’s finishing position and other details etched on the side.

Each award also comes with a signature Pairpoint touch, the “bubble ball,” which gives the finished glassware a speckled or raindrop look. To create the look, a hot piece of glass is placed in a three-piece mold, which dimples the glass. Once it cools, the piece is returned to the furnace, where it is covered by another layer of molten glass. This causes the dimples on the interior, cooler layer, to bubble up. Pairpoint’s glassblowers use different molds to achieve different sized bubbles.

The awards are given to male and female runners who finish first, second, and third in each of 10, age-based categories as well as for top finishers in the wheelchair competition and in team races. In the elite category, awards are given to male and female runners who finish anywhere from second to 12th place. Naturally, the first-place finishers in each category receive awards as well, but those are made of silver—and are not created by Pairpoint.

On the day of the race in both 2011 and 2012, Ross and Fiocco and their families had the opportunity to see the fruits of their labor at the marathon’s award ceremony. At the event, held at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel, Fiocco presented some of the awards alongside representatives from Long’s Jewelers. “People from all over the world were getting the awards we made,” Ross recalls. “Participants from China, Germany, et cetera. That’s cool.”

Creating 102 awards for the 2014 marathon took Ross and Mendez—the two Pairpoint glassblowers assigned to this project—nearly 102 hours to complete. “It was a solid two weeks,” Ross recalls, “and then some.” For the 2015 Boston Marathon, Pairpoint’s glassblowers made 108 awards.

Cape Cod’s Pairpoint Glassworks completes a special Boston Marathon project, while mourning a painful loss

Glassblowing requires precision, patience, and considerable skill. All of the pieces Pairpoint’s glassmakers create begin as 50-pound bags of glass pieces, which are dumped into a blazing furnace to melt. The glass is removed from the furnace when it glows at 2,150 degrees.

To work with and shape the glass, Ross says it’s imperative it be heated to just the right temperature—1,800 to 2,000 degrees. Temperature and timing, Ross says, are everything. Once the glass cools, even to a chilly 1,000 degrees, it is no longer pliable and cannot be shaped.

Cape Cod’s Pairpoint Glassworks completes a special Boston Marathon project, while mourning a painful loss

A Pairpoint employee since 1990, Ross considers the role he has had in making these awards a great honor. “Truthfully, I think it’s one of the coolest jobs I’ve done here,” he says. A recreational runner himself, Ross says the Boston Marathon holds a special place in his heart, and he knows that a lot of work goes into just crossing the finish line. “It’s a pretty impressive feat to run 26 miles,” says Ross. “It’s nice being involved in something like this.”

Emily Penn

Emily Penn of Marstons Mills is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying journalism and strategic communications. A native Cape Codder, she is a graduate of Barnstable High School and a former editorial intern at Cape Cod Life Publications aspiring to work in the public relations industry post-college. One of the many writing projects Emily completed for Cape Cod LIFE was a feature on Rose Clancy and the Chatham Fiddle Company.