Art Glass

The decorative possibilities of glass are diverse and unique. Among other things, glass is like beautiful gems and sometimes surpasses them in some way. Glass is a convenient material for fine art. That is why this material pleases and fascinates a person. There were times when only glass could compete with gold at its price. The fact that the earliest man-made glass samples are decorations also says a lot.

Masters of the production of glass products from old times were called glass blowers. After all,  to get various forms - balls, vases, glasses - from a viscous glass melt is possible by glass blowing.

A Glassblower at His Work

The most important working tool of a glassblower is a blowing tube. It is a hollow metal tube 1–1.5 m long, one-third lined with wood and fitted at the end with a brass mouthpiece. Using a tube, the glassblower picks up a molten glass from the furnace, blows it out in the shape of a ball and forms it. At the same time, he uses metal scissors to cut the glass mass and attach it to the tube, long metal tweezers to draw out and shape the glass mass, as well as create embossed jewelry, etc., cleaver to cut the whole product from the tube and a wooden spoon (rolling pin) for leveling dialed glass. The glass preformed with these tools is embedding in a wood or iron mold. The rest of the cut must be removed by grinding.

The finished product is cut off from the tube and carried on the fork into the annealing furnace. The product is annealed for several hours at a temperature of about 500° C in order to relieve stresses in the glass. Because of them, an unannealed product can crumble at the slightest touch, and sometimes spontaneously.

Colored Glass for Fusing

The product prepared in this way may be subject to grinding and polishing, cutting, as well as metallization and painting. Modern and at the same time low-budget types of artwork with glass, are fusing and lampwork, creating small decorations and decorative objects using a hand burner or a small desktop electric furnace. They do not require a special workshop, complex stationary equipment, a large amount of energy and sophisticated technology which comes with many years of experience, and beads and bottles can serve as materials for the beginning.