Ruminations of a stained glass artist.

This morning I opened the kiln to find my champagne bottle and wine bottle had fused together. I am sure I didn’t place them too close together in the kiln. The only other possibility is that one bottle rolled into the other. When I place bottles on the shelf I always check to see if there is a tendency for it to roll. The bottles aren’t always the same thickness all the way around, so I roll them to find where gravity natural takes them.  Not sure why it rolled. I will have to check if the shelf is level. I also always place a kiln post on the edge of my shelf to prevent the possibility of a bottle rolling off the shelf. That would be a real disaster and cause a major melt down – not just in the kiln, but in me as well.

You might be thinking that the fused together bottles could actually be quite useful. Cheese on one side and crackers on the other. This is true, and will probably be how I will personally use it. But don’t look for any of these in my online shops. It is not something I can sell. I have no way of knowing if the glass in the two different bottles are compatible. What that means is that if the glass is not compatible, combining the two could have caused some stress in the glass and it could break apart anytime. It could break today, tomorrow, or next year. There is no way of knowing. I think I read somewhere that if you put the glass in the freezer for a certain amount of time, and it doesn’t break that you are okay. I’ll have to look into that a bit more. In the meantime, I’m going to have to figure out how to appease the kiln gods!