 The original glasshouse was built soon after the first glassblowers, Germans Poles, arrived in Jamestown in 1608.A series of small furnaces were built in the area near the current exhibit.A small crew of glassblowers and laborers not only chopped down hardwood trees for fueling the furnace (sometimes requiring up to two weeks to achieve the 2,300 degrees needed to melt the basic ingredients), they also collected the ingredients, ash, sand, crushed oyster shells, and burned seaweed.