Coloured art glass woven fruit bowl

My friend rebuilt her entire kitchen....starting by pushing down the interior walls.  It was a HUMUNGOUS JOB.  Regardless of the mess, the inconvenience and the cost, down came the walls, out went the stove and everything.  The entire plan was to keep it elegant and simple with an enormous shiny redgum bench as the feature.

 This is where I came in and made a woven fruit platter to match.  This is the ruby and cherry red art glass, (must make sure that I used the Cherry red and not the ruby - the cherry is a gorgeous colour)!

The first thing was to purchase the colours that she ordered.  Cherry Red and Grape and loads of clear which I cut into strips the old fashioned way. 

 Here is the almost finished stack of glass used in this 40cm x 40cm platter.  We fused some samplers to ascertain which firing schedule was best for the result we wanted.......

The strips were carefully lined up in the kiln.

Here it is before the kiln is turned on.  It goes into the kiln for a full fuse, but a soft full fuse so that we could see the dimensions between the layers.

Close up then wide shot between the full fuse and the slump.

Then, I prepared the mold after carefully washing and drying the work.  Here's the mold.

Gently taking the kiln only up to 677 degrees the glass was placed on top of the mold and here is the final result. 

I'm trying to take a new style of picture of my glass art....here are a couple of examples.  We had such fun taking these. 

I think showing people in pictures like this shows you more realistically the size, shape and colour of the work.  I'm now working on one that features two transparent mid blue stripes and one almond strip. 

And my favourite.

that's the story of our new cherry red and grape woven fruit bowl...I do hope you like it.

Devitrification on surface of fused glass

Well you think you have an idea about how to do something because you've done it a million times and had a successful result....but no, "pride comes before a fall" as my mother-in-law would advise.

These pieces that are already sold and I have received the monies for (back in 2009) - so I am aiming to make them as efficiently as possible.

Pulling the "blue deco" pieces out of my kiln yesterday I was astonished to find that they were all scummy and opaque on the surface.

I was aiming for shiny and clean. I was aiming for a set of "blue deco" that were ready for slumping and then posting to the USA - but no, I now have to sandblast the surface of all these pieces before I can slump them and send them off.

These pieces were perfectly clean and dry before they went into the kiln. I have gone to the font of all glass knowledge, the Warm Glass Bulletin Board and searched under "devitrification" and realise that the detergent I have been using has left the surface of the glass with just enough residue to create crystalline structure upon fusing that can't be eradicated easily.

I think its simply wonderful, that people in the glass industry share their knowledge and expertise so that we can learn and relearn whatever it is we are needing at that time.

Thanks to everyone on the Bulletin Board, good work and thanks again. If you are interested its simply: www.warmglass.com/ .