Art Glass Revisited and Revealed

A reminder from a friend has prompted me to share some of my art glass creations. This will be a bit of an update as well from a previous post Today I am mostly . . . as I have managed to move one of the projects on a bit.

First things first: The top image is of the piece I am calling 'Dimly Remembered Tree of Plenty'. I quite like this title and I can see potential in this piece now that I have foiled it. What does 'foiling' mean. Foiling refers to the application of a copper foil strip (comes in lots of widths) with adhesive back to the cut edge of the glass pieces. This technique was invented by Louis Comfort Tiffany way back when the 'foil' was considerably thicker.

Dimly Remembered Tree of Plenty

This will be a small panel to be displayed in a commercially available frame. See previous post for the frame. Who know I might even solder it soon!

[Updated: As you can see I did indeed solder the mini panel today and it does fit the frame beautifully. I am really pleased with this panel on a number of levels. First, an experiment to abstract a section of one of my existing panels has worked. Second, I love the deviations in the design. It feels more like an impression of the original work which is very pretty and impressive due to its size but is quite clean looking as well. Now clean looking isn't a bad thing but I do like things a bit rough about the edges. Third, the subject of the tree of plenty - good times - wealthier times - better times seems to be in sharp contrast to the current situation in the economy and also in other places around the world which used to be rich beautiful places and now are scarred and suffering unrest. The roughness in this design demonstrates how easy it is to slip from good times into bad times on all sorts of levels - personal, social, national and global. (blush) End of Update]


Mini leaded panels with painted (pebeo) techniques

These two panels were experiments in using pebeo bake on paints. I am terribly frustrated that I can't yet paint on glass using proper stained glass paints! One day - it will happen.

The leaf is a scribble tracing of an actual leaf from the garden. I used different coloured glass strips and added details in various colours. The piece is leaded and set in a commercial frame. Only 8x6 inches in size.

The tree uses different techniques. Some texturing of the glass - in one case the total surface of the glass is painted over 3 times. Other techniques involved blacking out the background to reveal shapes. I've also used simple painting of objects on the colours. Again a small 8x6 panel leaded and in a commercial frame.


Mirrored Trinket Dish

I have made a few small lidded boxes and even a few with hinged lids. I have to say that my style is rustic and I was playing around with using forms to construct pieces. Some of the lampshade designs that you see around today were created originally by Tiffany and use moulds to construct them. I have not received sufficient inspiration to tackle one of these lampshade . . . yet. These sorts of projects are usually 1000+ pieces and wax/glue to stick them onto the forms and a soldering session that takes several days to complete. A marathon of work - so if you do see a locally produced example of say Tiffany's Dragonfly Lampshade and it has a large price tag, please do bear in mind that each piece represents at least an hours work, the cost of the glass which can be considerable, the hardwear of the lamp which will probably be an excellent quality reproduction stand, in addition to the time.

Anyway, back to my modest little dish. I cut the pieces from a paper template I created by wrapping the card around the steel dish. Curvature is tricky - my method was to half plan and half wing it: in other words, my usual method.

I do sometimes work totally from a design created on paper and then transferred to glass. But even then one has to be able to work around problems. Different types of glass respond differently. Green for instance is a very brittle glass and will shatter when breaking shapes out. Textured glass can be particularly difficult to break cleanly. Sometimes a piece in the design is just not a viable cut which means that the glass will always break into that piece which generally leaves you with little option but to accept two pieces in the design where once you had one.

To construct the dish I covered the steel form with masking tape sticky side out and stuck the foiled glass pieces to it. Then soldered away. The dish is patinated. This one was created with leaded solder and so unsuitable for foodstuffs.


Sun Ray Art Box

This box started life on paper as a single design which occupies 4 panels. I think I originally conceived of it as a flat panel with 4 parts. In the end I thought to make this into a lamp of some sort which didn't turn out that way. I still intend to solder some candle cups to the brass bar at the bottom of the open box so it can be used as a candle holder. I already use it as a candle surround and as an object placed to catch the sunlight. When the sunlight strikes it at an angle the glow is just incredible!

The piece is roughly a foot high. I have stopped using it as a prop on my jewellery display as people tend to fix on it and are rather shocked that I put a £40 price tag on it.

I leave you with the remainder of the photos. If you have any questions about art glass in general I'll try to answer them for you. The pieces featured here are not listed on my commercial websites. I consider them either too rough, too unfocussed, too expensive to ship making them unlikely to find new homes. However, if you are smitten with any of them I certainly am willing to consider selling them.

Michele