Saturday 8 April 2017

The Art of Glass

Glass is something that has always fascinated me, I have several pieces which I love, making pieces is a whole different business, the art of blowing glass is mesmerising. 

Today I have had a one to one session with an artist blowing glass, I made a couple of pieces which I will get tomorrow as it has to go into a Lehr Kiln for an Annealing of glass which is a process of slowly cooling hot glass objects after they have been formed.

Here is a few images from today.

 

This piece is an experimental piece as we added metal leaf to the glass, I have a feeling it may have burnt and gone black but if you don't test these things you would never know. 

You can see I am manipulating the glass pushing into it with a metal rod, this will form air pockets when the next hot glass is collected.

Shaping the glass using newspaper soaked in water, quite worrying that the only thing keeping the molten glass from touching your bare skin is a wad of the daily news. My tutor above is Dave Martin, actually he is a family friend and used to be in Fire Brigade with Chris my husband.

Using tools to shape the glass, all the time taking the glass back and forth to the oven to keep the glass hot enough to manipulate. You can see I ended up wearing a sleeve to protect my arm from the Heat of the glass.

The above is the start of the second piece, you have to keep the pole turning in the oven to stop the glass falling off the pole.

The second piece is a blown piece, you can see me blowing out my cheeks as it takes a bit of pressure to get the air down the pipe and start the process.

You can see Dave forming the shape while I blow down the pipe to form the cavity inside of the glass.

I will post an update with both pieces finished as soon as they have cooled.

This has been an amazing experience for me, anyone thinking of booking a one to one session at the National Glass Center in Sunderland I can highly recommend it.

3 comments:

Wendy L said...

Fascinating Jak, I saw glass blowing in Venice, an amazing technique, xxx

The Craft Bucket said...

Looks great, I have been given a glass blowing experience, always wanted to have a go, can't wait. Love Jane x

Sandy said...

Wow!!!!! Good for you!!! I'm impressed!!!!
sandy xx