On May 13, Paul and I participated in a glass-working workshop through Minnetrista Cultural Center here in Muncie. How often do you get an opportunity like that? We had a terrific time.
Back in December, we had attended their Luminaria Walk -- a sort of holiday open house -- where the Ball family mansions were open and decorated for the holidays, admission to the museum was free, and there was a craft show and some artists demonstrating their craft. Among these, we were fascinated by the glass workers. There were several women making glass beads, and Steve Sizelove was selling some of his intricate glass vessels and demonstrating blown glass, as I recall. He was very personable; we probably stood there chatting with him for 30 minutes. In the course of conversation, we learned that he occasionally taught workshops through Minnetrista, so when we saw it advertised in the paper we were sure to sign up.
We were bussed up to Ft. Wayne, where there's a very small commercial glass studio with enough space for the four participants and the two "chaperones" to work. We were given an assortment of solid glass rods to work with, mostly clear glass but also a few colored glass rods to experiment with. We learned a lot of basic techniques that we were able to apply in slightly different ways to make some pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately, very little of it survived the annealing process -- I don't have a solid grasp on the chemistry of it, but suffice to say that it's very much like kiln-drying pottery. They hadn't properly prepared us for annealing tragedy, but it isn't uncommon, come to find out, that not everything survives.
The basic idea is that you hold your rod of glass in the flame of a beefed-up bunson burner-like torch and begin melting the glass. Whereas liquid water wants to drip, molten glass wants to gather up on itself, forming a ball. It's important to constantly spin the glass rod to keep the growing glass ball on center and thwart gravity's attempts to pull the ball of glass down. This process is known as "gathering". By adjusting the angle of the rod in the flame, you can adjust how much of the rod is melted into the ball and thus, you can control the size of the glass ball.
From there, any amount of flattening or pinching or pulling can be done to shape flowers, fish, forks, faces -- whatever your imagination and dexterity will allow. Sadly, nothing but our practice pendants came out alive. My pièce de ré sistance, such as it was, was a pretty flower with leaves at the end of a green glass rod that I teased out into a cocktail fork of sorts. I also made a fish, but it cracked just as I was putting the finishing touches on the mouth. I was working on a rose, but it exploded in fantastic fashion after I reheated it to rapidly. Whoops!
The process was a lot of fun and some of the glass had very interesting properties. For example, we were given a small rod (4mm) of a cream-colored glass. As Steve was demonstrating some of the things we could do with colored glass, he started melting this cream-colored glass and one of the women asked if it would stay red when he was done. I, in my ignorance, though the woman was daft -- but sure enough, there's some sort of metal in the glass and as Steve worked with it and the glass cooled, it had turned predominantly a rust color, with some dark and cream swirls.
I was initially curious to try again, since our time there was nearly up (I estimate we had 4-5 hours of hands-on time) before I felt I had a handle on the possibilities that lay before me. However, it was disappointing to see the casualty rate and now I'm not sure it would be worth it.
Back in December, we had attended their Luminaria Walk -- a sort of holiday open house -- where the Ball family mansions were open and decorated for the holidays, admission to the museum was free, and there was a craft show and some artists demonstrating their craft. Among these, we were fascinated by the glass workers. There were several women making glass beads, and Steve Sizelove was selling some of his intricate glass vessels and demonstrating blown glass, as I recall. He was very personable; we probably stood there chatting with him for 30 minutes. In the course of conversation, we learned that he occasionally taught workshops through Minnetrista, so when we saw it advertised in the paper we were sure to sign up.
We were bussed up to Ft. Wayne, where there's a very small commercial glass studio with enough space for the four participants and the two "chaperones" to work. We were given an assortment of solid glass rods to work with, mostly clear glass but also a few colored glass rods to experiment with. We learned a lot of basic techniques that we were able to apply in slightly different ways to make some pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately, very little of it survived the annealing process -- I don't have a solid grasp on the chemistry of it, but suffice to say that it's very much like kiln-drying pottery. They hadn't properly prepared us for annealing tragedy, but it isn't uncommon, come to find out, that not everything survives.
The basic idea is that you hold your rod of glass in the flame of a beefed-up bunson burner-like torch and begin melting the glass. Whereas liquid water wants to drip, molten glass wants to gather up on itself, forming a ball. It's important to constantly spin the glass rod to keep the growing glass ball on center and thwart gravity's attempts to pull the ball of glass down. This process is known as "gathering". By adjusting the angle of the rod in the flame, you can adjust how much of the rod is melted into the ball and thus, you can control the size of the glass ball.
From there, any amount of flattening or pinching or pulling can be done to shape flowers, fish, forks, faces -- whatever your imagination and dexterity will allow. Sadly, nothing but our practice pendants came out alive. My pièce de ré sistance, such as it was, was a pretty flower with leaves at the end of a green glass rod that I teased out into a cocktail fork of sorts. I also made a fish, but it cracked just as I was putting the finishing touches on the mouth. I was working on a rose, but it exploded in fantastic fashion after I reheated it to rapidly. Whoops!
The process was a lot of fun and some of the glass had very interesting properties. For example, we were given a small rod (4mm) of a cream-colored glass. As Steve was demonstrating some of the things we could do with colored glass, he started melting this cream-colored glass and one of the women asked if it would stay red when he was done. I, in my ignorance, though the woman was daft -- but sure enough, there's some sort of metal in the glass and as Steve worked with it and the glass cooled, it had turned predominantly a rust color, with some dark and cream swirls.
I was initially curious to try again, since our time there was nearly up (I estimate we had 4-5 hours of hands-on time) before I felt I had a handle on the possibilities that lay before me. However, it was disappointing to see the casualty rate and now I'm not sure it would be worth it.
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