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Fred@KilnQuest.com
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Dishes & Bowls
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Click
on an image to see it enlarged
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On the face of it, making kiln-formed glass is easy. You get
some glass, you get a kiln, you pile the glass together in the kiln, melt
it, and then you have a piece of art. Big deal.
 But
glass is a very difficult - and expensive - medium to work in. It took
me many years of diddling and dabbling to be able to do much of anything.
And I still have a very long way to go in order to satisfy my own ambitions.
It might look easy. But that's like saying that if you take a pile of
boards and a hammer, and then nail the boards together, you will get a
house. It's easy to watch an expert do it, but it is damnably difficult
to do it yourself.
The plates and dishes shown here represent several different techniques
for working with the glass.
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Colored glass sheets are cut into strips and laid on edge,
fused into a solid piece, reworked into the desired shape, slumped in a
form to the desired shape, and then polished as needed.
Many small pieces are laid into a deep pile and then melted at a high
temperature until the individual pieces all run together and fuse together
into one solid piece. Believe it or not, I actually agonize over the placement
of each little piece and it takes me hours just to set one of these babies
up.
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Here, details such as flower petals are made one at a time
using a torch. Then they are placed onto a plate blank and fused in. As
a final step a clear "cap" is fused on top of the dish to provide
depth and clarity.
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This is a very dark and striking design. Gold leaf "floats"
over a black background. |
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Hand-pulled stringers are melted together into abstract, organic
designs that I call "racing stripes." They are then melted into
the face of the dish. |
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Most
of these rectangular plates
are about 12" x 16"
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A racing-stripe pattern
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Detail of one of the stripes
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More
Dishes and Bowls on Page 2
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But
glass is a very difficult - and expensive - medium to work in. It took
me many years of diddling and dabbling to be able to do much of anything.
And I still have a very long way to go in order to satisfy my own ambitions.
