What is art glass? Let's define the three types of art glass and see where warm glass fits.
Cold Glass - Cold glass is glass work that is performed at room temperature. A classic example of cold glass is stained glass but the most widespread use of cold glass is called "float glass" and basically refers to the windows in your car or home. Working with cold glass is an excellent introduction into the techniques that will be invaluable in moving up to warm glass.
Warm Glass - Warm glass is glass that generally is cut and assembled like cold glass but is then placed in a kiln and fired to temperatures that range from 1100 to 1700 degrees. Warm glass is also frequently called "fused glass" because the assembled pieces are permanently fused into a single sheet or block of glass.
Hot Glass - Hot glass is glass that is worked at temperatures that exceed 2000 degrees. A common example of hot glass is glass blowing. The artist gathers an amount of molten glass from a cauldron and works, re-heats, re-works, and continues this process until the object is complete. Blowing an air bubble into the molten glass gives the artist a starting point to open the glass and work it into a cylinder and continue into a cup, vase, bowl, or other object. Hot glass is worked while roughly the consistency of thick honey.
Here are a few pictures of cold, warm, and hot glass that I have worked. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture.
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This is one of my earlier pieces. This basically was a kiln test using float glass. What appears to be an iridized reflection is actually the tin coating of the float glass. |
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This is an example of fused glass. There are seven separate layers of glass fused into a block about 1 1/2" thick. |
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This is the result of extensive grinding and gnarling with a wet saw multiple small pieces of fused glass, fired upside down, inverted and refired to get the sense of depth. |
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This piece has multiple sheets of white powder laid with snowflake stencils. They were stacked 7 layers deep with crushed irid glass to give it a wintertime sparkle. |
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This landscape uses lots of iridized glass to a nice effect. I ground channels on the edge of the hills and filled in with black frit to create the trees on the horizon. |
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It's hard to see in the photo, but the top half mirrors the bottom half. It was a neat technique with glue and frit on thin fire paper. I distorted the irid on the bottom with clear stringers. |
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This beach scene was quite complex and incorporates cabuchons, fired frit and powders, irid glass, and took multiple firings to complete. It is mounted on gray slate. |
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I played with a technique of layering glass powder and then using a very thin strip of glass as my nib. Here's my first attempt at chinese calligraphy using glass powder as a medium. |
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From right to left, a Christmas ornament, a pumpkin, and several paperweights, two made at Corning New York and two made a DC Glass in Hyattsville. |
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Pendants: easy to make, easy to market. I sold quite a few of these at Taste of College Park in 2006. |
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My studio. Flameworking to the right of the table, cutting grid to the back left, and a Bullseye crate crammed with full and half sheets. Yes, this is how it looks "cleaned up." |
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Two of my three kilns. I swear by Paragon kilns and would recommend nothing but Paragon. Email me before you buy a kiln and I might be able to save you a lot of hassles by telling you what to expect and how to handle delivery. |
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My very first hot glass piece, made while I was visiting the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. I plan to make annual pilgrimages to visit and learn. |
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No, it's not glass, but so many people have asked me to post pictures of my pottery. This piece with the chinese characters for Peace is about 15" across. |
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Another wall mounted platter with chinese brush painting. This one is about 16" across. |
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A platter and salsa bowl, about 15" across. I threw most of the pottery shown here while living in Hawaii. |
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And this piece is something I made sometime around 10 years old. It's amazing that it's survived all these years. |
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This is one of the more recent pieces of stained glass that I have hanging in the house. This hangs in the foyer and is about 14" by 22". |
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