“Trying to love someone who doesn’t know how to love himself/herself is like hugging broken glass.” (Quote Master)
Glass art is a beautiful and versatile product
that can be made into stunning pieces of art in the form of windows, glasses,
ornamental items, and much more. While techniques such as glass blowing and
firing glass in the kiln are not things most hobbyists can do at home, other
glass art techniques such as glass painting will allow even the novice glass
art enthusiast to create something wonderful.
Glass can be shaped and formed in unlimited
ways. It has the artistic quality of being able to bend and reflect light in a
very unique manner. There are three main categories of glass art that refer to
how the glass piece was made. Every technique used by glass artists to work on
glass falls in one of these three categories.
The Cold Glass Category: Any type of
technique or processes used in glass making when the glass itself is not heated
is referred to as cold glass working. Common cold glass techniques include
polishing, cutting, engraving, grinding, sandblasting, and etching.
The Hot Glass Category: The hot glass
category involves working with temperatures of approximately 2000 degrees to
create molten glass. The hot glass is then used in the processes of glass
blowing, glass sculpting, and casting the glass into molds.
Pieces such as
goblets, vases, sculptures, hand blown bowls and items, and ornamental glass
objects are commonly made using this molten glass that is heated in a furnace.
The cast glass is created by using this same molten glass and placing it into a
mold with a ladle.
The Warm Glass Category: To create such
glass pieces as slumped glass, fused glass, kiln casted glass, kiln glass, bent
glass, and pate de verre, the warm glass process is used. This involves heating
glass in a kiln or oven at temperatures of anywhere between 1250 to 1600
degrees depending upon the type of glass being created.
As part of the hot glass category, the art of
glass blowing involves using a technique where the hot, molten glass is
inflated to form a bubble. Using a blowpipe or blow tube, the glassmaker will
then blow the glass into the desired shape. The two main methods of glass
blowing are free-blowing and mold-blowing.
Free-blowing techniques have been in use
since the 1st century BC. The glassmaker will blow small puffs of air into a
molten blob of glass, known as a “gather,” located at the end of the blowpipe.
This blowing cools the interior of the glass and creates an elastic type “skin”
on it, while cooling also happens to the outside of the glass blob from
exposure to the air. The glassblower can quickly inflate the glass using this
method and form it into a specific shape.
Mold-blowing appeared around the 1st century
AD, and refers to a technique used in which the molten glass blob is inflated
much in the same way as in free-blowing, but is blown into a carved wooden or
metal mold that acts to form the shape.
"You use a
glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your
soul."
(George Bernard Shaw) [i]
[i] Adapted from:
· "3 GLASS ART TYPES YOU NEED TO KNOW”
by Duncan McClellan
· "Types of Glass Art” by Bernard Katz Glass
· "Types of Glass” by Lake Erie Artists
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