A Long Journey to a Fused Glass Plate

The journey a fused glass plate takes can be pretty amazing. This one had more than its share of trips into the kiln. Just proving that it isn’t finished until the artist says so.

Here is the path I took to get to this piece.

Step 1

I started with the idea that I wanted to create a glass piece to drape over a wavy bowl bold that I recently got. If you follow me on Facebook, you know that my first attempt to use this mold ended with a shattered piece of glass. It happens! But in case it was to happen again, I didn’t want to waste a lot of expensive glass. On the other hand, if it worked, I wanted it to look good. I decided to make a piece with clear glass and some confetti glass on it. Here is what it looked like going into the kiln.

Step 2

I wasn’t completely thrilled with the result. It looked a bit flat to me. To create some depth, I added small bits of clear glass to the top and pressed it in the kiln between two shelves. I liked the look much better. Pressing the glass, however, increased the diameter of the glass and now it was too big to go on the mold I had originally intended it for.

Step 3

The glass had a nice matte finish that it picked up from the kiln shelf and I opted to slump it as is into a fluted bowl mold. Unfortunately, the result was not what I had hoped for. The matte finish was now uneven. In some places the glass looked glossy while in others it was matte. It may not be very noticeable in this picture, but the unevenness really bothered me.

Step 4

Back into the kiln to fuse the piece completely flat again. Sometimes there are nice surprises in the kiln and this was one of those times. The glass was now flat again but had retained a nice little scallop around the edge from the fluted bowl mold. I liked that!

Step 5

One more time in the kiln! This time I used a round plate mold which was yet another mold I had not tried.

Step 6

Almost perfect! To my eye, it still seemed to be missing something. For the finishing tough I sandblasted the back to give it an opaque matte finish. Now it looked complete to me! Phew!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *