Glass fusing and fried eggs

A couple of weeks ago I was a student for a day on a glass fusing course. My only past experience with glass fusing was when I was 12 years old, when I made a pendant. I still have it, but unfortunately it broke into two when it was dropped a couple of years ago.

The course this time was held at  the Liquid Glass Centre in Wingfield, Wiltshire. I made some test tiles using mica’s,  copper wire,  enamels, and  bullseye glass, and some pendants.  However they didn’t work as well as I hoped as the thermocouple in the kiln was faulty, which resulted in too low a temperature.

Luckily I had the chance to go back and make some more pendants. I used bright bullseye glass and dichroic glass sandwiched between clear (float) glass. Here are the pieces before  firing.

I wanted to make  simple tessellated pieces because  I was interested to see whether they would retain the tesselation or if it would fuse together. As you see here the glass has kept most of the tessellation and I am pleased with the results. I like the way the fibre paper pulls the shape in (this is put in to make a hole so cord can be threaded through for the pendant)

Then I made a bigger piece. It is based on a sketch I drew  inspired by the markings on  a Ray I saw  in one of the pools  of the sealife centre in Weymouth.

Here is the design.

Again I laid out the design like a layered mosaic, onto a  sheet of float glass. I wasn’t happy with the grey glass that we crushed into frit, as it wasn’t dark enough and I hoped it would darken a bit in the kiln. Here is the piece ready to be fired.

And here it is after firing.

Although quite a nice piece of glass, I am not really pleased with the results. The grey glass hadn’t darkened enough in tone and it was blotchy, and the red glass I used in the background was a  glass that  changed colour once fired. Unfortunately I only realized this once I had finished the piece ready to be  fired and then it was too late to change it. I didn’t want so much red, I wanted amber!

Funny thing is it looks like I am about to fry some eggs!