By the invitation of Jorge Barracha, an owner of a kiln company in Portugal, seven members of Sandbox, Tomoko, Shin, Hama, Eico, Takeshi, Mio and Ryoko went to Portugal for a month in September 2002. Mr. Barracha saw Sandbox's exhibition and sand casting demonstration at the 32nd Glass Art Society Conferenc (www.glassart.org) held in Amsterdam in May, 2002 and invited us to give some workshops at his factory.
The kiln factory of Mr. Barracha, Barracha Lda. was in Valdo dos Frades, two hours north of Lisbon.(www.barracha.com) In one section of the huge factory, we gave three, four days workshops on sand casting with some introduction to solid working and kiln casting. Students came from all over Portugal and many were ceramic, fusing and jewelry artists.

Sponsored by Barracha Lda we also participated in two fairs, the 2nd International Glass Exhibition in Marinha Grande and the 3rd Fiera de Artes e Pintura Decorativa in Caldas da Rainha. At each fair we gave short demonstrations using a small electrical kiln furnace designed by Mr.Barracha.
One of the students of the first workshop was a famous ceramic tile artist from Caldas da Rainha called Ferriera da Silva. He recommended us to Museu de Jose Malhoa in Caldas da Rainha and the museum decided to host an exhibition by Sandbox in May 2003. We are also planning to have more workshops at Barracha Lda coinciding with the exhibition.
At the biginnig of our stay in Protugal, we were a little taken aback by the different pace of life, (fairs we participated started from three in the afternoon and ended at midnight! Yet, everyone started working at 8:30 in the morning!) But, we soon became used to it and enjoyed the incredible hospitability of the people at Barracha Lda, the creativity of the students, great food and wine (unfortunately we were not blessed with the weather).
Ignorant of the glass situation in Portugal, we were surprised to see more than a hundred glass factories in Marinha Grande (where the first fair we participated took place) with a museum, Museu do Vidro, dedicated to glass. The museum opened in 1998 to commemorate 250 years of glass industry in Marinha Grande. The city represents approximately 90% of glass production in Portugal today.
In terms of studio glass, glass fusing was most popular. (Mr.Barracha's wife, Conceicao Cabral is a fusing artist and gives well-attended fusing workshops, which some Sandbox members took.) Sand-cast sculptural glass, and solid kiln cast works were new and works by Sandbox was received with awe. Students who attended our workshops were eager to absorb new techniques and were highly experimental. For the first workshop, we only taught sand casting, but realizing that most people had kilns at home, but had little access to hot glass, we decided to introduce kiln casting from the second workshop.
As we were giving the workshop, Mr. Barracha was experimenting with different types of hot glass furnaces, which artists can easily use at home. They ranged from 30 *30 *30 cm small top loading electrical kiln with a small open pot inside, an electrical kiln with a refractory stainless steal pot, a small tank gas furnace copying the design of a furnace used at a glass blowing demonstration at Marinha Grande, etc. I am sure given Mr. Barrachaユs super-positive attitude, a firm understanding of kilns and his great staff, in the very near future, he will make hot glass furnaces more accessible to artists in Portugal, as he did with his personally designed glass fusing kilns.
Sandbox hopes to play some role in spreading the beauty of solid sculptural works and the joy of working with solid glass in Portugal. We are looking forward to returning to Portugal next year and to continue a long lasting relationship with Portugal and Barracha Lda.

Oct 2002
Ryoko Sato