New Fused Glass Pattern Bar Bowls & Plates

I've been busy stocking up and trying to make larger pieces in preparation for the Association of Clay and Glass Artists (ACGA) show earlier this month (this was the show that I posted about earlier with the live jury).  Here's a few pieces that I made within the past month.

The first is a commission piece for a friend of mine:

I liked the look of the blue and green combination, so I decided to expand on it using both the progressive and bookend pattern bar techniques:

I also made another bowl using the black/grey/red combination.  I tried in the past to make a fused glass plate using black/white/red but found that a little challenging since the black and white combination make pattern bar work much more difficult (black fires softer, while white fires harder).

Keeping the black/red combination going, I made a fabulous 12" plate using the bookend pattern bars across and down.  It's difficult to see but there's a dark red strip about 2/3's of the way down.

This was also difficult to photograph.  If I put it against the light, the colors are a little too bright.  The following two photos give a sense of that (bright colors) but turned out much better than the photo above did when backlit.

The ACGA show turned out to be a great show, so all the trouble of the live jury was worth it.  The quality of the work was very impressive, especially considering that there were about 160 clay and glass artists only.  It was inspiring to see the breadth and variety of clay and glass work.

Now that it's over, I have three more pattern bar blocks that I'll be cutting up this week, so I'll be posting some new work in the upcoming months.  The color palate will be new for me - a little more muted or fall type colors - blues & grays and ambers & greens.

Let me know what you think and if there are any color combination or designs that particularly strike you.

Encouragement & Inspiration

Last week, I read about a studio downsizing in my area and decided to check it out to see if could pick up anything.  I wasn't really in the market for another kiln but there seemed a large variety of items - molds, frit, glass...etc.  It turned out to be the studio of the late Dan Fenton, one of the pioneers in fused glass.  I met a wonderful woman, Patti O'Doherty, who told me a lot about Dan and his industry contributions such as working with Bullseye on their glass and Phil Teefy to make Glass Glow kilns.  She also gave me a number of Glass Art magazines of which Dan was one of the editors.  It was great reading and seeing part of glass history.  Dan passed away from cancer but was working on glass right up until the end and even completed a gorgeous stained glass piece with limited vision.

Patti, like Dan, is one of those people who has worked in glass for 30+ years and is a wealth of information.  As a glass artist, she asked to see my work and was very encouraging, which was especially welcome coming from someone who had so much experience.  While I didn't purchase much, I did buy 4 sheets of glass from Dan Fenton's stock.  Patti encouraged me to make something and reference that it's made with Dan's glass.  But, what I plan to do is to create something solely from these 4 sheets as special tribute to Dan.  So, look for this sometime later this year.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to see Patti again soon when she holds the rest of her sale on molds, frit and other glass in about a month after the Jacoby stained glass window show at her studio finishes.  I feel privileged to have met her and to have heard about Dan's contributions.  It's not that often that you meet someone in your field with so much experience that encourages and inspires you.  And, for this, I am very thankful.

Making Fused Glass Pattern Bar Pendants & What I Learned

Since I'm making functional art glass (e.g. plates, bowls and platters) using pattern bars, I thought I would see try my hand at using pattern bars as pendants.  I decided to pursue two styles, the bookend pattern bar (where there's a mirror image) and the Roman pattern bar (which has a series of columns).  I also wanted to play around with shapes so that the design could be accentuated.  

For the bookend pattern bar, I decided on a fat triangle or fan shape as I liked seeing a wider portion of the glass to reflect the mirror image.  To help decide on the shape, I have a number of plastic templates like the kind you would use in drawing architecture plans. However, if you didn't have these, you could also cut shapes out of paper.  This gives you an idea of what the pendant will look like once it's cut.  For the Roman pattern bar, I decided on a trapezoid shape. I was a little limited on the width as it's only one bar (whereas the bookend is two).

The next consideration was what type of bail to use.  I had planned on cutting a donut hole on the trapezoid shape but once I received the drill bit, I realized it wouldn't work on my Dremel.  Note: I guess a new drill is on the "to buy" list sometime in the future.  Also, since each of the pendants have transparency built in, I didn't want to use a standard bail.  So, I decided to try using pinch bails.  To use a pinch bail, you need to drill a hole in the glass and then "pinch" the bail closed through the holes.

Lessons learned:

• Buy a lot of drill bits.  One bit can drill one pendant or it can drill several.  On my first round, I went through a pack of 6 in no time and had more left to drill. Next time, I ordered a pack of 25.
• Don't try to stretch the drill bits - as soon as it looks like the diamond coating is worn off, toss it.  Otherwise, you will end up cracking the glass. You'll know the diamond coating is gone when you see the hole is black or the drilled run-off is black or the bit doesn't seem to make a much of an impression.
• Drill from both sides rather than trying to make it through on one.  This gives a cleaner hole and you're less likely to have a larger puncture mark.  To help identify where to drill on the back side if you're drilling through opaque glass, I put a pin in one side and view from the side, so I can determine where to mark on the back side to line up the hole.
• Buy large bails.  Since I knew the glass would be 6mm or so, I needed to get a wide bail.  However, in addition to being wide, having long bails also helps as you need the length plus width to help get the bail closed around thick piece of glass.  I originally purchased a shorter bail for the above pendant but it wouldn't close.  Note: with larger bails, you may need to cut the prong length.
• Use jewelry pliers, if you have them, to close the bails - I have chain nose pliers that helped pinch the bails shut.

It certainly was a learning experience making these but I'm glad that I tried it.  I like the look much better than the standard bails, although one of these days, I still need to try making donut pendants.

What's New: Fused Glass Leather Bracelet

Typically at the beginning of the year before my show schedule starts, I like to experiment with new designs.  In fact, this is my favorite part of making glass (in addition to learning new techniques).  I've been toying around with incorporating fused glass into a leather bracelet since last year and decided now was the time.  However, I didn't really know how I would go about this as I've never worked with leather before.  So, I did a search online and found a leather company, Tandy Leather Factory, in the area and stopped in.

There, I found a kindred spirit, Jim, who also likes to jump into projects.  He was quite helpful and gave me a few ideas of how I could attach the glass to the leather, most of them involving riveting.  So, I left the store with some leather pieces, a rivet set, mallet, and hole punch and went home to figure out how I might design the bracelet with the glass attaching to the leather.

I sketched out a few design options and settled on the method straight away.  I would fused wire onto the sides of a fused glass strip that would be the center of the bracelet and attach the leather through the wire loops.  So, I fused a prototype, cut the strips of leather with a razor blade and practiced my riveting.  Note: the success of the riveting is more of a function of having the right sized rivet more than anything else, although being able to set the rivet straight (i.e. pound straight) does help.  From the prototype, I could see that the design would work, so I fused a number of glass centers and gave them a gentle slump using a bracelet mold.

Last week, I went back to see Jim and we figured out how the rest of the bracelet would come together.  I also needed Jim to give me a lesson on setting snaps. Now, I have a leather strip cutter, snap/rivet setter, leather scissors, an end punch, leather dye, applicator, and everything else I need to make a set of bracelets.

The bracelet was relatively easy to make, especially when you have someone who's willing to help you. I'm very happy with how it turned out and look forward to making more in the near future.  Let me know what you think of it.

Fused Glass Pattern Bar Bowl: Lessons Learned

In my last post, I wrote about how I was able to save some of the glass that failed and showed a picture of the blank before it was slumped.  Well here's the final product:

I am thrilled with the result and it's been sitting on my kitchen table since I finished it.  This is also my first bowl as I was space constrained in my old kiln and in general I hate the idea of creating excess glass from cutting out circles (all circles are made from squares).  Although now, I'm planning to make more and have my sights on another larger bowl mold.

In the process of making this, I learned a couple of things that I thought I would pass along:

• As the rim shows, you can no longer have a layer of clear and a layer of color, which is the normal fusing process.  The deeper the slump, the more the rim will show.  In the future, I might reverse the color (e.g. white on one side, black on the other) or have two layers of the same color.
• I incorporated the pattern bars right into the fused blank and ended up using my tile saw to cut off the excess and grinder to neaten up the edges.  This process worked pretty well and saved me from a lot of grinding!  To determine where to cut, I used a protractor and drew a circle with a white DecoColor pen (this is what many manufacturers use to mark glass as it doesn't come off easily).
• I needed to use a level to make sure the mold and glass was sitting evenly before I slumped it.  The mold I used is a ball shaped mold but when you put it on posts, it can shift depending upon where you have the posts.  Fortunately, it didn't look right in the kiln so I was able to adjust it before I slumped it.

As I live in the Bay Area, we just got a Bullseye Resource Center here.  One of the benefits of the Resource Center is that Bullseye has all of their molds on display with a sample of what the slumped glass looks like.  This is so helpful as the slumped glass looks differently in person than it does on their website (this is because you have the scale and depth that you don't have in photographs).  Based on looking at the bowls, I've returned two unused bowl molds and am purchasing another one that I most likely would not have purchased based on what I saw online.

Looking forward to making more of these!