Warm glass
After not doing anything creative for at least a year, I was feeling the effects of it - consumed by work, easily frustrated by the politics and processes of the corporate world and lacking a feeling of passion, inspiration and spontaneity that used to be familiar and energising. In fact, I felt a real lack of energy - as they might say at the Ashram, I had lost connection with my vital self.
One of the reasons I had stopped doing glass slumping was the limitation of the temperature controller on my kiln, so I saw this as a practical problem which could be easily fixed with a bit of cash. I had a Harco electronic kiln controller (HE-NC8) installed on my Tetlow K4a kiln.
The Harco controlled works well and is easy to use. It can hold eight 8-stage programmes, allowing for controlled temperature increases and cooling, as well as soaking for periods of time at one temperature. The instructions are a bit confusing, which is funny because Tetlow even provide re-written instructions which are nearly as confusing as the original Harco guide, but once I worked out how to make a programme and start the kiln, it is very easy to operate and simple to change temperatures and rates.
So with the new controller installed, I stocked up on my System 96 glass and started making plates. The first designed I tried used transparent blue glass on a clear base. The blue was cut into curved squares (is there such a thing?) and fused onto the clear. I fired this to 780 degrees so the blue squares retained their shape, with nice rounded sides.
Excited by the ease and effectiveness of this design, and motivated by my mum’s upcoming birthday, I then made a set of Japanese styled plates. The first time I cut out the curve from the black square, it worked perfectly, but Murphy’s Law meant that I wasted 3 more squares of black glass trying to repeat it! I ended up succeeding in breaking out the black circle segment by running the crack on the underside of the glass, tapping and pressing with patience. The red circle segment proved to be no problem as this could be cut from a far smaller square of glass which seemed to mean it had less desire for the break to run off its course.
I fused the black and red glass onto a clear base so it looked the same from the underside, and used white stringers to form the lines at the side. I fired the piece to 785 degrees to fuse the glass then slumped it to 665 degrees.
I made some smaller dishes using the same design but with white instead of the black. To round off mum’s present, I made an oval dish with curves of black, red and white.
Searching the internet for design ideas, I came across the Sri Yantra Hindu symbol. I built up the central triangle using stringers, and after several attempts, I managed to get the triangle formation to stay in place while firing.
To do this, I tack fused the triangles separately at 730 degree, then stacked them together and fused the triangle pattern together at 740 degrees which worked well - this made the centre pattern flat.
To make the main base design, I found a good video on Youtube which makes cutting circles look easy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7pVZt5c80M
I tried it when cutting the white circle and it worked! I then fused the entire design at 785 degrees and slumped it into the plate shape at 665 degrees.Unfortunately, the triangles picked up some shelf wash which I thought I cleaned off, but you can see here that I didn’t get it all so it caused some of the lines (dark green, red, orange) to pull in. The black triangle needed to be a bit larger so it retained sharper corners as well… But it was fun to experiment with firing at different temperatures.
The next design I tacked was inspired by the upcoming naming day for my friend’s new baby girl. I wanted to get them something which they could keep, something they could use and something which felt like it was from me. This daisy design was very easy after the multiple attempts of the yantra but I really like the simplicity of it.
My next step is to get the metal roof of my kiln replaced. The inside of the roof has rusted and sometimes little bits of black gunk drop into the kiln and stick themselves into the molten glass, never to be removed! Replacing the roof is going to cost $450 but it will be worth it…
Hi,
This is amazing, I didnt knew that you did all this as well. keep up the good work.
Regards Precilla