In the last week, I've been playing with scrap glass from Fremont Glass in Seattle, It's beautiful glass and these scrap strips are cut from the cylinders or sheets during production. Just arrange a few strips, fuse, and then drape over a form and you get a fun glass basket. (Obviously not green and yellow like the one in the rhyme/song)
Because Sunday was Christmas and a rather busy day, I cheated a bit this week and used a plant already hanging around the house for the season and plunked it inside.
The blue table runner is made of sheets of mirrored glass tile from Bedrock Industries. One day they may get cut apart and used in projects but for now they make me smile sitting on a table. Here, the sun causes a blue reflection on the basket. The whole thing is more than a tad garish. Maybe a white poinsettia would cut the roar of color back a bit. On the other hand, it's cold and less colorful outside right now so why not enjoy an indoor carnival of color?
Happy Boxing Day and third day of Hanukkah!
Lovely colored glass ... yet another talent you possess, Peter ... lamp working! Why am I surprised? :)
ReplyDeleteWOW! Just wonderful!
ReplyDeleteA busy Christmas Day? Why, whatever were you doing Peter...?! I love the 'vase made from the glass strips but could you be bit more explicit in how you fused and draped them, please? Your poinsettia looks perfectly at home there, whatever the colour
ReplyDeleteGlad to share how to do this. For two or more pieces of glass to successfully fuse without breaking apart, they must be of the same coeffieient of linear thermal expansion (COE.) Since I know that glass from Fremont mostly has a COE of 96, all that I had to do was line up some strips going in one direction on a kiln shelf to roughly make an 18" square. Atop those strips I placed strips at 90 degree angles to the others. The shelf was placed in a kiln and heated at 500 degrees (F) per hour until 1000 degrees (above which temperature glass no longer suffers thermal shock from heating or cooling) then, as fast as the kiln could heat (9999 degrees an hour) the temperature was raised to 1460 degrees and left at that temperature for 10 minutes. The kiln was flash vented until the temperature went back down to 1000, then allowed to cool to 950. The glass annealed at 950 for about 20 minutes and then the kiln cooled for several hours to room temperature. The result was a flat glass grid. The form I used to drape the glass is a stainless steel ice bucket treated with kiln wash placed upside down in the kiln. Because the surface of the glass is now larger and closer to the elements in the top of the kiln, a slower firing schedule was used - Ramp up at 200 degrees an hour to 1195 and hold there until the glass has draped over the form (visual inspection.) Once it's where I want it, the glass is once again annealed and the kiln allowed to cool to room temperature. It's as easy as baking cookies but takes a little longer.
DeleteI am totally with you on enjoying the indoor carnival of color, especially this wonderful pairing of the peachy poinsettia with the blue table runner. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!
ReplyDelete"indoor carnival of color"....well put! January shall henceforth be the month of an "indoor carnival of color"...
ReplyDeleteYes, January is kind of an I.C.C.y month.
DeleteYou make your glass creation seem so simple but I suspect it is NOT. In any case, it's very pretty and the glass table runner is a brilliant idea, in more ways than one.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kris. My glass guru, Florence, always says, "The only difficult thing is the thing you haven't yet learned to do." It's pretty much as easy as baking cookies.
DeleteYour carnival of color is just the ticket when all outside is frosty and gray. With apologies to Ella, I will take it over red and yellow any day.
ReplyDeleteWow, Peter, what a stunning thing you did. You're talented, I've read your explanation the process and think it's not too easy as cookies.
ReplyDeleteGarish? Not to my eye. On these grey winter days, the color is welcoming and wonderful.
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