Professional Practice 2 (9)

Well, we are still waiting for the new element for the glass furnace to come from the US, so no glass blowing this week.

Instead I have been helping Lisa by looking at the latest design she has in mind as an entry for the Ranamok. The deadline for entry is looming and she hasn't decided on a final design yet. Today we looked at a leaf design she has drawn up and started to carve out of fiber board. We also looked at all the colours she has available in her extensive collection of glass sheets to put together a colour scheme.

Lisa checking shades of Bullseye glass against the light. We have to look for sheets of glass that are compatible with each other. All glass has a "COE" compatibility rating that has to be the same if you are fusing glass together - you can't fuse one glass with another of a different "COE". With brands of glass such as Bullseye and Spectrum glasses within each brand are compatible with each other, but not with another brand. So, we looked at what combination worked well within the Bullseye range and also within the Spectrum range to see which selection suited the concept better.

We also looked at frits (granulated) and powdered glass for colours that could be used for shading - again these have to be compatible with the main glass being used, whether it is Bullseye or Spectrum (they both have their own ranges of frits and powders).

This is a platter that Lisa is preparing for a slumped design. The platter is "green" this means that it is unfired so Lisa can carve into the clay as well as building it up with layers of refractory paper to get more definition in the finished piece. We discussed colours for this piece which will be made with sheet glass as well as powders and frits. The powders will be used to fill the carved out areas but we have to work out how they will mould into the sheet glass - a piece like this may take several firings to get the effect right.

A glass splashback almost ready for installation. The last job is to lightly go over the surface with the finest grade of steel wool to make sure that all overspray from when the back was being spray painted, is removed, so I got a feel for doing that today.