GLASS CLASS PART 1

Had a great weekend in country Victoria - attended a couple of beginner's workshops on Glass Slumping & Stained Glass Mosaic in Kilmore, just slightly over an hour's drive from Melbourne.

Marina Villani, the artist and teacher, has her own studio on the grounds of her lovely property. Her home-based business in hand made glassware as well as stained glass mosaic, goes by the name of Myriad Glass Designs. I met her at the Flemington market, and was impressed by the lovely things she had made, which included glass tableware, jewellery, as well as other decorative as well as functional items. When I found out that I could learn how to make some of these items in 1-day clases, I decided to check it out. The fees for the classes were $120 for each class, which covered tuition, tools and materials and notes, as well as a simple 3 course lunch. However, if you choose to attend both classes, you only need pay $185. Being the kiasu Singaporean that I am, I decided to "pow ka liao" & do both classes.

Saturday was the 1st workshop on Slumping, which is a technique of creating patterned glassware by melting glass over a design or stencil. We had to start off first learning how to cut glass using an oil cutter, which was rather fun, though yours truly managed to poke my palm with the end of a piece of glass and sustained a superficial cut.

No blood was shed thankfully, and the rest of the class went on without much incident. Our projects for the day were a set of 4 coasters and a small dish.


That's Marina in the bright orangey yellow top, with Pam (her neighbour & my fellow student for the day) and moi. We are standing next to one of the 3 kilns that Marina has in her studio. A kiln like that costs a few thousand & each kiln has its own characteristic temperatures & cycles for each technique of treating the glass.



This is the "before" shot of my glass ware in the kiln, waiting to be "baked".
The designs for the coasters were drawn directly onto the kiln powder with the end of a stick, like drawing in sand ! The dish at the top part of the picture uses a stencil over a frame. The glass sheets are laid over the top of the designs/stencil and the kiln closed & "fired up". The glass is then slumped over the designs/stencil thus creating the impression onto it. The glass in left in the kiln to complete its cycles of slumping and then allowed to cool overnight.


This is the "after" shot of my first glass ware creations - it was like Christmas all over again, such anticipation on opening the kiln after the process was completed. All that remained after that was to remove the glass ware, brush off the kiln powder, wash & dry them & stick little silicon "feet" onto the corners of each glass coaster. It had been a very rewarding day indeed, but there was more to come.