Stained Glass Projects

I've promised a number of people (including myself) that I'd put together a website to help people keep tabs on the glass projects I'm working on. Not many pictures yet, but I hope to include more soon. (Maybe Beth or Kim can send me a picture of the dreidel in its current place.)

Before we get to the pictures, much thanks must go to the folks at Glass FX in downtown Champaign for their products and service, and to Danny, for his fine instruction!

For our class's second project, I chose a pattern from the Audubon wild birds book I'd picked up at Glass FX: an evening grosbeak. The photo here is of an intermediate stage, perhaps 2/3 complete, taken out on our porch this past September. The finished piece is now hanging in our front window; it's about a foot across, and contains bits of eleven different sheets of glass. (My apologies for the size of the file; it may take a moment to load. I finally got around to taking a picture of the completed project today; it's another rather large file, and can be found here.)

I was lying awake one night near the beginning of Hanukkah when the idea for the next project came to me. It was a snap figuring out the angles and cutting the glass, but holding it all together while the solder took hold was a pain in the butt. The letters turned out nicely; I hope this shows well in the two images below.

	The finished piece is about 15 centimeters tall, including the stem, and maybe 8 across, all cut from one sheet of glass.

Right now (February 6th) I'm working on a few projects at once. The glass has been cut for a sort of "centerpiece" I've envisioned which will suggest the integration of a line integral. Most of the work is done on a tricolored dodecahedron that's sitting on the workbench in the garage (picking out the bits of solder that have dripped inside is going to be a nightmare). And for the next piece in the avian series I seem to have begun, I've started earnest work on a ring-necked pheasant whose pattern I drew up myself (the pattern book limits itself to songbirds). Right now the disembodied head of a male pheasant is lying in a Valomilk box in the kitchen in a Godfatheresque fashion. I've just taken a few more pictures today, in fact. The first and third show the pheasant in its current glory, and the second gives a view of our cluttered workshop.

	Head and tail...
The ol' stomping grounds: boatloads of broken glass on the left, unused sheets to the center fore, workspace in the far front. In the back is the grinder and soldering bench. Now we need to invest in a light table...
	Almost done...just the feet to cut at this point. Glass from seven sheets used, much of it left over from earlier projects. The bulk of the head and the thighs are of a beautiful irridescent purple made by Bullseye.

Of course, more pictures soon.

Thursday, February 17th. I've finished the pheasant; it's about a foot long. A picture of the bird (foiled and mostly assembled) is at the right. The finished product can be found here.
	Coming up next: another dreidel, a bouquet of roses, some more birds...who knows?

Friday, March 25th. Well, I've got my next design worked up. A sort of symphonic mathematical (surprise, surprise!) arrangement based upon eight important sequences and a little arithmetic modulo 4. Here's the schematic:

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Wednesday, May 18th. Not a whole lot more to report on the glass front, as we've been horrifically busy trying to sell the house and buy up a new one for us down in Asheville. I have got the came and a lot of the glass for the planned mathematical piece (shown above), and I've done all but the soldering and silvering on a pair of candleboxes I'm making for my best friend and her new husband. I plan to finish all but the Chinese characters by this afternoon. I'll post pictures of those soon, but in case she's reading this, I don't want to spoil the surprise!

Thursday, September 1st. I've finally got around to uploading the long-promised picture of the candleboxes I threw together a few months ago. The focus is a bit wonky; I seem to recall I was working in the dark without flash (which probably has some metaphorical significance or another).

Still nothing doing on the symphonic arrangement of sequences, although I hope maybe maybe maybe to get to the studio some this weekend, if grading doesn't take too much out of me.

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006. Back at last! As you can see from the shot on the right, I got back into the dreidel-making business. Maggie and Beth and I have joked that I sound like the title character from an Isaac Bashevis Singer story: "Patrick the Dreidelmaker." In any case, the guy on the right is my latest handiwork, representing the better part of a really nice sheet of glass, half a pound of solder, and roughly eight hours of my life.

I have also started work on a free-hand pattern for a magnolia blossom. The pattern is drawn and copied, the glass selected, and five pieces cut. I have a couple of pictures; I promise to post those soon. I hope that this next piece will be the central pane of a triptych featuring magnolias in 3 seasons.

Monday, June 26th, 2006. Boy, when it rains, it pours! I spent another half a day in the workshop over the past few days, clocking in roughly 13 hours all told on the magnolia project (shown below in three stages of the process, from the completed pattern on the left, through the cut 'n' foiled piece in the middle, to the soldered and polished work on the right). All that needs done now is caming the border and adding a patina, maybe another hour's worth of work. Lookin' nice!

Next up: another piece in the "flowers of our yard" series. Perhaps an echinacea blossom, or maybe one of the roses in the garden...