He had a small aluminium pot to hold and support the canes.
This pot was something he designed and cast himself. It had a ring of tiny pits in the base, to hold the canes at the bottom, while the top ends were threaded through holes in the collar of the pot.
The precision of the size and dimensions of the gather to be carefully and precisely lowered through the hole in the collar must have been absolutely critical, the ease with which he achieved this was astounding -
as was the way he managed to obtain the perfect and precise twisting of the canes on the marver,
before blowing them, on the gather, into a long tube shape, which he then nipped in half and turned it inside out, back onto itself to achieve the perfect contrast of twisted canes.
He pointed out that this is not the only way of achieving the effect, that two blown gathers with canes twisted in opposition to each other can be placed, one inside the other, but that this does not result in such a perfect match of twists.
He made it all look so easy... :thud: But you need to have been there, just to watch the way his fingers were constantly working the punty - it was like watching a world-class musician playing their instrument.
I noticed his assistant, when holding a punty with no glass on it, was still constantly working it round - it seemed to be automatic - rod in hand = fingers gently working it around,
then I noticed that about all of them!