Lampwork Cats

For those of you who know me- I am allergic to cats. For as long as I can remember, I have never been a fan. When I started making lampwork puppies, pigs, sheep, and cows I figured it would be a matter of time before someone asked me about a cat.

It took me a while to get the ear placement and shape right. But finally I think I got it.

As with most Pandora/Euro bracelet-style glass beads, they are made of 104COE Italian soft glass. This glass expands quite a bit as it is heated which is okay as long as the entire piece expands at the same time. If one side is heated more than the other however, the bead will crack, and four-letter words will flow.

The kicker in sculpting these tiny little animals is that they crack very easily while in the flame and kiln. Problems arise when putting small details on the bead, such as the eyes and mouths of the cats. It's difficult to take your time to get the details right without letting the back side cool down too much. The entire bead needs to be taken back into the flame and warmed- being careful not to over heat the small ears and noses to the point where they soften and change shape. It is this reason that it is not uncommon to get less than 50% yield out of a batch of animals. That's right- make 4, sell 2, throw 2 in the garbage.

As I practice with a particular character, I tend to get faster at it. This means that I can whiz through the details almost like riding a bike, and focus more on keeping the bead evenly heated as I go.

I am always amazed to see the work that an experience lamp artist can produce.. with such defined shapes, rich details, and of course absence of cracks!

Happy lampworking (with lots of pratice)!

Implosion Explosion!

As I've practiced my borosilicate implosion pendants, I've started to post pictures on facebook. Almost immediately I started getting requests to buy them. This is great for me because.. well, what am I going to do with a pile of pendants?!? I don't wear jewelry aside from a wedding band and college class ring. Secondly, the sale of these pendants pays for the glass they are made out of, plus a little more to start the next project.

Perfect- Finally a hobby that pays for itself!

So here is my latest favorite pendant design. I like it because it is a technical challenge, but also it looks really cool when its done. Admittedly, it's not a "pretty" as some of the florals... but I'm sure the next designs will take what I've learned and improve my other designs.

This pendant uses a technique called a "Tube Implosion". So, obviously we start with a tube of glass and begin drawing patterns on the end using colored glass. Here I've used orange to make the stripe, and silvered glass to make the dots. The colors of both of these glasses will change temporarily in the heat, and the silvered glass will "develop" really interesting colors as it is worked in the flame.

 Step 1: Drawing the pattern on the tube

Heating up the end of the tube will cause the glass to gather up into a ball, leaving the pattern pretty well intact, but changing its orientation. I use a marver to flatten the end into a disk called a maria. As you can see the spiral on the tube turned into a spiral on the disk.
 

Step 2: Gather and flatten to form a the maria

There is some "magic" that is done here to adjust the pattern into the center, shrink it down so it fits on the face of the maria (this is where the word implosion comes in), and to make it pop into 3D. These are common techniques in glass blowing. It takes a lot of practice and repetition to understand exactly how the heat will make the pattern behave, but finally I'm starting to get it to do exactly what I want.

Next I add the background color. Black really makes the orange pop, so I'll stick with that. I add a gather of the color on to the face of the maria, which will become the back of the pendant. Then using a fair amount of heat and my marvers, I flatten and shape the black down into the back of the pendant.

Step 3: Adding and shaping the background

From here I punty up to the back, flame-cut the tube off, shape the lens, and add a loop. Its a mouthful, but the result looks like the picture below. The round lens shape of the pendant really makes the pattern fill the pendant and jump out at you. Here the orange within the pendant as started to take on its final color, and you can see the result of the silver glass: A wispy white with purples, blues, greens, and yellows.

Step 4: Shape the lens and add the loop

All thats left is to clean off the punty mark and throw it in the kiln to anneal. Oh, and to start another pendant!