The Milano Collection is a line of mouth blown and hand-decorated crystal, produced in the European country of Romania. Each piece is created one at a time, in several stages. Each glass is a piece of art created by a worker best described as an artisan. Glass blowing is the art of creating an object from molten glass by blowing air into it utilizing a tube. The glass in the oven takes days to melt (the oven is never turned off). The blower collects molten glass onto the tip of his blow rod, being careful to accumulate just the right amount for the piece to be blown. A skilled craftsman blows each ware in our collection into the proper shape by mouth. When the shape, size, and thickness of the glass is just right, the piece is taken out and allowed to cool. To apply the intricate cobalt glass pattern, one craftsman rotates the piece on its axis while another dabs a rod into molten cobalt and spins a thin strand of the material onto the piece. After the glass is cooled, other craftsmen paint the vivid colors within the pattern using different colored luster and real gold. One last firing ensures that the color will last a long, long time.