This happened today- the world’s largest glass blown castle, housed at Shanghai Museum of Glass, has been broken into pieces after two children knocked the showcase down. It took some 500 hours of work by Spanish glassblower Miguel Arribas to create this masterpiece. You may be feeling bad for the museum or Miguel Arribas who will have to make some amends to fix the beauty all over again, but honestly, I am feeling bad for the parents of the two kids responsible for toppling over the creation. The poor parents must’ve looked the other way for a second which was enough for the two touring children to cross the belt barrier and topple the display case, causing the castle to fall. Let’s be honest here it could’ve happened to anyone and a glass museum should be more responsible and have better preventive measures in place than just a belt barrier when most of their visitors are going to be kids. For a child a belt barrier is something you cross over, a glass barrier is more ideal to block kids out. Anyway, the unfortunate accident occurred on May 30th, and the affected masterpiece was created using around 500,000 glass loops, weighed 60 kilograms, and featured spires made with 24-karat gold. It was made up of approximately 30,000 individual parts and weighed over 60 kilograms.
The very embarrassed parents have apologized for the incident and promised to take responsibility for the necessary repairs. The Fantasy Castle is based on the famous Cinderella Castle at Disney World, which is worth approximately 450,000 Yuan (that’s approximately $64,000). The Shanghai Museum of Glass has already contacted Arribas about attempting to repair the sculpture, but due to the travel restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, they are currently unable to travel to China.
[Via: CGTN]
