Pot melting

My latest experiment in the kiln is a pot melt. The idea is to fill an Italian (higher quality) terracotta flower pot with glass scraps and raise it off the kiln shelf using mullite (kiln shelf material) strips. Heat the kiln to 899°C and hold for 90 minutes. The (hopefully) molten glass flows through the holes in the base of the pot to fall and spread over the prepared kiln shelf. I did build a dam to form a 34 cm circle to hopefully avoid glass spilling over the kiln shelf edges.

I used 1.5 kg of scrap glass which should form a 30cm circle about 6mm thick. Two problems; too much black so what glass I could see flowing was very dark and too many strips of glass too long for the pot so as it melted it spilled over the pot edge. 

Pot melts can produce the most amazing patterns as the glass spreads out and reforms. I am hoping for a nice circle to mount in a stand as a sculptural table centrepiece or backlit on a sideboard. Worst case I will cut the result into strips like a pattern bar and refuse into other plates. 

One of the great things about working with glass is that every seeming disaster can be recycled and incorporated into another piece. I love the fact that there is very little waste as even the smallest scraps can be sprinkled over pieces or ground into powders to use later. The only problem is finding time to plan and make pieces as well as preparing moulds and recycling glass. No wonder all the best artists have assistants to do all that for them so they can concentrate on being creative.

Darling Point Installation

I am lucky to have a great network of friends and professional contacts who are willing to embrace glass art and recommend my pieces. At the ZimSSEF day an architect friend saw the range of pieces and thought that some glass panels would be perfect for an installation at a client’s apartment.

The apartment is in Darling Point with unobstructed views to Bellevue Hill. The rear balcony is huge and framed by a large grey wall. S & A commissioned me to produce 6 panels a tad larger than A4 size to be fixed outside and provide colour, texture and a feature for the wall.

All six panels are three or four layers thick (8-12 mm) with flat ground edges. The designs were selected by the client and were quite a challenge. Two are of cityscapes, two representative of water, one abstract curves and one Mondrian-esque abstract straight edged shapes.

A great number of hours went into the glass cutting and positioning and each panel spent 14 plus hours in the kiln. They will be affixed to the wall with a yet to be selected glue/cement and hopefully will give their owners and guests many hours of pleasure.

I really enjoyed the challenge and the working relationship with the architect and his clients. I am hoping that it will result in a few more commissions and make it to the practice’s website.

Supporting ZimSSEF

On June 5th Cranbrook School hosted a Zimbabwe Street Soccer Tournament and Savitrine Glassworks was happy to donate a $300 slab plate for the raffle prize and set up a market stall for the day. The day was very successful and we sold 9 pieces for a total of $800, 10% of which was donated to ZimSSEF. A huge thank you to all the buyers, fellow stall holder and everyone who dropped by to have a look at my work. Oh and Marcus' team came third, losing to the eventual Zimbabwean winners. Good day all round.

You can check out Street Soccer at http://vimeo.com/5316153 and donate at http://www.zimbabwestreetsoccer.com A documentary by James Maiden was screened on SBS in 2010.

Pattern Bars

Another technique is creating a glass colour/pattern bar which can then be sliced with a diamond saw and either incorporated into a slumped vessel or framed alone as I did for the TAP Gallery group Spirit exhibition.

The pattern bar is made up of strips of glass plus stringers, noodles rods, frits and powders. The results are not always predictable but always a joy to see complete after over 22 hours in the kiln. In designing pattern bars it helps if you can think upside down and in a mirror because what you will use is a cross section or slice of the bar and hopefully side-by-side they are symmetrical.

First, again, are the design and the colours then cutting strips of glass the right length but of varying widths. The strips are laid flat and vertically in the colour combinations you want. The key is that as the glass strips melt to form a slab or bar the glass flows and slides. This means that you can create curves and more interesting effects as wider strips melt and reform around narrower strips and rods. The strips are laid direct onto the primed kiln shelf and a dam wall is built around them to ensure the result is a slab and not a puddle.

After firing the slab is sliced and the bars polished with diamond boards or paper. They are a lot of work but well worth the effort and spectacular to see in a final piece. Below is "Wheels of Life" from the Spirit show.

Savitrine Glassworks begins....

So let’s just go back a little and start the story. I am lucky enough to have a printing press, a kiln, a workable studio area in the roof space and time to indulge in exploring my creative side. I have always painted or made prints and have enjoyed it immensely. I was given an opportunity to do a glass fusing course two years ago though it took a year to get onto a suitable course. I attended a one-day session with Dagmar Ackerman in May 2010 and became hooked. After some experimentation I have developed an affinity with glass and it is now my medium of choice. If confirmation were needed it came at a three day intensive master class with American glass legend Patty Gray in March 2011. Patty is knowledgeable, patient, inspirational but above all generous with her time and feedback. She has given me the confidence to experiment further and to just get on with it!

Appropriately for kiln fired glass work Savitrine means "of the sun" in Sanskrit and is also a (terrible) play on words. Sa vitrine is "his shop window" in French. Kiln fired glass started as a hobby, became a passion and now a business.

I entered two pieces at the RAS Easter Show and two more at the Sydney Family Show. No sales but my pieces held their own and it was a great opportunity to hear some feedback and confirm that my pricing was right. Out of the blue the Spirit exhibition at TAP Gallery in Darlinghurst came up as an opportunity to show four pieces. Again no sales but fantastic feedback from other artists and the gallery manager who suggested holding a solo show later in the year. Add to that two commissions from a very special friend and muse and I am off on an exciting journey.

It wont be easy and I will have to balance the necessity to sell functional plates and bowls with more creative art glass. The Savitrine Glassworks business plan is almost done and there are many challenges ahead but I am confident that I can supplement my income from the farm and earn a living.

The making of "Mudra (Girl in a Blue Dress)"

So much for the history of glass. How do I create a fused glass platter? Here is the process for “Mudra (Girl in a Blue Dress) that I made for the Spirit exhibition at the TAP Gallery in April 2011.

First comes the design – the aesthetic proposal if you will. I try to incorporate the guidelines of repetition, variety, rhythm, balance, emphasis, economy and proportion (the design principles as set out in “Shaping Space” by Zelanski and Fisher).

The final panel or plate is made up of two fused layers of glass, the bottom layer a single sheet of clear (Spectrum) System 96 glass and the top layer made up of pieces cut from sheets of both transparent and opaque glass. The girl’s dress is cut from a pattern called blackberries and cream. The glass in both layers must have the same coefficient of expansion. System 96 has a COE of, not surprisingly, 96 while Bullseye glass has a COE of 90. Mixing COEs just means a cracked and often irreversibly damaged piece.

The cut pieces of glass must fit closely together so some may have been ground or shaped after cutting. The glass is held in place with Glastac glue or (cheap) hair styling spray. Trust me, it works really well.

The glass must be really clean to avoid imperfections after firing.

The two assembled layers are placed on ceramic fibre paper on a kiln washed shelf. I am over cautious and could do one or the other but prefer to take no chances, as there are enough things that can go wrong! Glass tack or partially fuses at 730 - 760°C and fully fuses creating one uniform glass layer at 790 - 835°C. This piece is full fused with the following schedule; 60 minutes to 540°C then 30 minutes to 620°C and hold for 60 minutes. Thirty minutes to 810°C, hold for 30 minutes then rapid cool as fast as possible to 560°C and hold for 105 minutes, down to 440°C over three hours and then end programme. That’s an 8 ½ hour fusing schedule and then about another 8 hours of nervous waiting before the kiln can be opened.

The firing programme is in several parts – initial and gradual heating through the strain point then more rapid heating through the softening point to the working temperature followed by rapid cooling down through the devitrification range and finally slow maintenance cooling to ensure the glass anneals correctly.

Once fused the glass piece in this case is framed for gallery display. More often than not the fused piece will be slumped into a mould for a further 8 – 10 hours of kiln time and the final piece will be a functional platter for everyday use and a beautiful work of art to be displayed.

The History of Glass

Kiln fired or warm glass includes glass fusing, glass slumping into moulds, glass paste (pate de verre) and glass casting. It is not glass blowing (hot glass), lamp or flame working or bead making. It can include cold working like etching, sandblasting and carving.

Glass is an incredible medium to work with – versatile, challenging, unique, surprising and always beautiful. The very history of glass is the stuff of myth and legend. Glass has been used by man for about 5,000 years and the legend recounted by Pliny the Elder (23 – 79 AD) in Natural History is that merchants used nitrum blocks in a fire on a beach at the mouth of the Belo River in the Eastern Mediterranean. The nitrum fused with the sand a liquid glass flowed forth. Nice story but the fire would not have been hot enough and archaeologists have dated glass beads to 3,000 BC, the Bronze Age, in Mesopotamia. The Phoenicians used the glass created in ceramic glazing to decorate pots or as jewellery.

Glass was popular and an item as precious as gemstones. It even gets a mention, as ‘crystal’, in a passage from The Bible, Job 28 12-19.

12 But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? 
13 No mortal comprehends its worth; it cannot be found in the land of the living. 
14 The deep says, “It is not in me”; the sea says, “It is not with me.” 
15 It cannot be bought with the finest gold, nor can its price be weighed out in silver. 
16 It cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir, with precious onyx or lapis lazuli. 
17 Neither gold nor crystal can compare with it, nor can it be had for jewels of gold. 
18 Coral and jasper are not worthy of mention; the price of wisdom is beyond rubies. 
19 The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it; it cannot be bought with pure gold.

Small glass vessels were produced about 1650 BC, glass mosaic bowls about 1500 BC and glass blowing about 1000 BC. The centres for artisan glass making were Persia, Phoenicia, Syria, Etruria and of course Egypt. As the Roman Empire expanded in the first century BC so did the transfer of glass making knowledge and techniques. As Rome declined the centre for glass shifted to Syria and Palestine where glass blowing reached extraordinary heights. The Mongol invasions destroyed the glass production centres and Venice became the glass capital of the world for over 200 years.

The Venetians transformed glass in the Renaissance and as early as 1271 the glass guild produced strict laws regulating the business protecting secret formulas and techniques and forbidding any glassmaker to work outside of the Republic. In 1291 the glass furnaces were relocated to the island of Murano after frequent fires in the glass district and to prevent foreigners from learning the glassmaker’s skills. In 1457 Angelo Barovier (1405 – 1460) created a perfectly clear, crystalline glass and other makers revived millefiori and mosaic techniques.

By the 16^th century Venice had competition from France, Germany and Moravia (Czechoslovakia) and it was not until the late 1950s that Murano again came to the fore. The Germans are credited with the revival of stained glass, specifically a 12^th century monk named Theophilus, though coloured ‘glazed windows’ in churches date to the 7^th century. Just try to imagine Chartres, Notre Dame or La Sainte Chapelle without their amazing stained glass windows.

An Englishman, George Ravenscroft (1632 – 1683) invented lead crystal glass in 1676 by adding lead oxide to Venetian glass. The practice and art of cutting crystal glass developed from there and England, Ireland and Bohemia became the centres of production.

With industrialisation glass became a utilitarian medium with factories churning out pressed glass pieces for the masses. The English Arts and Crafts and European Art Nouveau movements restored glass to an art form. Emile Galle, the Freres Daum, Henri Cros and Rene Lalique in France and Louis Comfort Tiffany in America created beautiful and functional glass works.

The studio art glass revival began as recently as the 1960s starting a new and exciting era. Glass can be produced in small studios away from industrialisation and is an amazing medium for creative expression. As art and as practical pieces the market is readier than ever for quality products.