People often ask how I get the colors into my art.  Do I paint them on?

No, I don’t paint my pieces.  The color is glass in a variety of forms…

• Glass Powders

For fruits, leaves, seed pods or any blown parts, I apply layers of colored glass powder.  The powder can be bought in a wonderful palette of colors from several vendors, and I just order over the internet. The powder is sold in a range of grits from a fine talcum powder texture to the size of salt or sugar granules. 

To apply the glass powders, I heat the point (see my blog post on March 10 to learn about “points”) then roll it in the glass powder.  Because the point is slightly molten, the glass powder adheres to the surface.  After building up several layers, I then add layers of other colors with sifters, giving the surface a mottled, organic appearance. 

• Frits

Frits are little chunks of colored glass.  Like the powders, frits are available in various sizes, small to large.  Large frit chunks are approximately 2mm in diameter.  I use frits to color my branches.  I start with a clear glass rod, heat it approximately 1 inch at a time, working my way along the rod.  Once a spot is heated, I roll it into the base powder, melt that in and then roll into layers of assorted frit colors and sizes.  This is a rather tedious process, working inch by inch, but the resulting branch is beautiful and I think worth it.

• Colored Glass Rods

Colored glass is also available in rod form.  The type of glass I use is made in rods of approximately 6-8mm diameter and approximately 12″ lengths.  These are ordered by the 1/4 pound. 

I use colored glass rods primarily for vines and leaf stems.  Given the complexity of my vine pieces, it would be difficult and very annoying to use clear rods and coat them with  powders as I do the branches, so I just buy rods in my desired vine color.  These are bent, twisted, melded and shaped into the vine forms in the torch flame. 

Luckily for us glass artists, the companies that make our glass are continuously working out new color formulas, so the palette we have available is ever-expanding.  Although my knowledge of the making of colored glass is rudimentary, I do know that the colors are produced by metal oxides added into the glass material.  Each color has its own peculiarities and reacts to the mix of gases in the flame in its own way, which is one of the challenges of flameworking.  If we don’t treat each color appropriately while working it, the color is ruined – it turns an ugly burnt charcoal gray or a distasteful liverish color.  Some colors are especially tricky yet appealing in that they can produce a range of colors,  from amber to purple for example, depending on the gas mixture in the flame. 

Before colored glass was readily available, artists added the metal oxides right into their glass in the flame.  One artist who works this way is Suellen Fowler.  She has such mastery over the colors that, on a tiny perfume bottle, she can produce incredible blends of yellow to scarlet through her manipulation of the torch gases, and she is able to achieve a richness and depth of colors that we cannot duplicate with pre-colored, manufactured glass.  See Suellen’s beautiful work at www.flameworkglass.com and click on the Museum tab.