adventures in glass
Welcome. Over the next year I intend to document my design life, and in particular lost wax glass casting. I am a wax carver and silversmith, and I have been fortunate enough to be awarded a QEST Garfield Weston Foundation ( Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust ) scholarship, to enable me to study lost wax glass casting, with wonderful glass artist Angela Jarman. Angela is an internationally renowned glass artist, and luckily for me, an amazing teacher. Angela’s website ; - ) www.angelajarman.com
More on the fantastic QEST organisation here: www.qest.org.uk
My study will cover approximately a year of work, and I hope you will enjoy following my progress - and seeing if I can learn to blog! :- )
So, just a brief introduction. I have been fascinated by glass for years, and now have the chance to learn how to put my carving work into glass. I have previously taken Angela’s short courses, so I have an understanding of the process of glass casting, but not the technicalities, and I don’t yet really understand the material.
I am aiming to post regularly, although I started working with Angela a few weeks ago, so these early posts are by way of ‘catch-up’ and I will put them up as and when I can, until I’m up to date.
I will make an effort to briefly explain technical terms, ( as and when I learn them ; - )) but for those who are interested in design, but not necessarily the intricacies of glass casting, I will try to use enough pictures ( and headlines for the skim readers - this would be me! ) to make it interesting.
My overall aims for the year, and where I would like to be at the end of the year, are pretty ambitious. I want to create a new body of work, incorporating my wax carving into both silver/metal and glass, but also to have the materials start to meld and harmonize with one another in my designs.
Some specific areas I want to cover and understand are carved and intricate cores. That is decoratively shaped hollow spaces within the glass.
Patination ( surface colouration ) of glass. This is quite an old fashioned idea now, which seems to have fallen out of favour, and just makes me more interested to reclaim it in my work.
Other ways of introducing varying colours into an object. For example, pre-cast elements, re-cast into an object or applied to the surface.
Soooo much to learn.
Angela and I started our year with a days’ discussion of my design ideas, (thanks to Covid I have had a while to focus my ideas, try not to stalk Angela,, and even to begin carving possible models) so it’s not such a standing start as it sounds.
I am interested in making detailed vessel forms, with intricate metal stoppers. Some of my first designs have textured cores, others have outer patterns which will need different finishing and polishing treatments.