Kitengela Glass - Studio

This guide to the Kitengela Glass studio near Nairobi explains why there is no gas line or plug behind its shelves of goblets and chandeliers: the heat comes from a beehive-shaped furnace burning used engine oil, built by hand by Anselm Croze after he trained as a glassblower in Holland. It traces the studio back to his mother, Nani Croze, who started the whole place in 1979 on gorge-side land bought from a Maasai family, building her first studio from chicken wire, rock and mud. Local masons spent roughly three to four years of trial and failure getting the furnace right.