Kiln Formed Glass Workshop with Louise Truslow

Now we all know that I love nothing better that trying my hand at something new, so when I told Alan I was going to take a class working with glass and that I would be working with a kiln, I could see the poor guy mentally calculating how much this was ultimately going to cost him!  I am not sure whether that look is despondent or resigned.  Ok, that was unfair, but only just!

Three of us took the class, with Robin and Jennifer doing one project and I another, utilising different methods.  Our teacher was artist Louise Truslow.  If you want to see some beautiful glass (as well as paintings) go take a look at her website.

I was surprised at just how labour intensive the class was,  We started at 9am and left about 6pm!

Jennifer and Robin's project involved them making a flat clay model of the bottle that they were recycling (or is that upcycling these days?).  The shape being slightly larger than the anticipated size of the finished project.  As you can see, it was very dirty work.  This had to dry off slightly before the next stage.

Robin had a dog paw print theme on her project.  She cut a paw print stencil and used this on her clay to draw around and then excised the clay inside the stencilled area.  Jennifer had a shell theme to her project and used shells as stamps, which she firmly pushed into the clay.

The resulting marks in the clay were beautiful.    

We each needed a big bowl of Plaster of Paris for the next part of the project, so we clamped on our masks, measured the ingredients and mixed it up using our hands.  This bit was great as the plaster felt so wonderful.  It took a while for the plaster to start to thicken.  Before it had thickened too much, Robin and Jennifer poured a little bit of plaster into the design areas on their clay.  When the plaster in the bowl thickened enough, it was poured over the clay mould, covering it completely and flattened on top (which would ultimately be the bottom in the kiln).  I made a huge meringue!  Boringly, I just needed a large rounded base that was as flat as possible.

The moulds were left to dry off a bit, which strangely involved them spontaneously heating up.  When they were fairly dry, the clay was removed from the moulds.  The moulds were sanded and smoothed to make them level and generally cleaned up.  I didn't need to do anything with my plaster as I hadn't used clay and was only using it as a base.  You can clearly see the designs in the plaster mould.

Sadly these beautiful moulds could only be used once, as they crack during the firing process.  The moulds were put out in the sun to finish drying.

Earlier, while Robin and Jennifer were getting down and dirty with their clay, I had a more mundane task to perform, cleaning up the bottles that were to be used in my project.  As I was using recycled bottles, I couldn't mix up different types of bottles (i.e. Coke with Pepsi bottles), something technical about the glass and heating points and stuff like that.  The bottles also needed to be really clean, which meant not only had the label to be removed, but also that impossible glue that keeps the labels adhered.  Finally they were polished with a bit of Windex and then left to drain out as they needed to be as dry as possible when they went into the kiln.  All of this was so that I could make frit, which I suppose is really what we non glass working people would think of as smashed up glass!

This is Louise's large kiln in her garden work area, which I filled with the lime juice bottles, laid out next to each other.  They were then left to bake for about an hour or so.

Once the kiln had reached target time, we immediately opened up the kiln and wearing special gloves and using a long pole with a hook on the end, we removed the bottles from the kiln and dumped them into a bowl of water.  Well to be truthful, Louise did most of this as I was a little bit nervous.  I expected the bottles to spit and shatter on impact, but they didn't.  Yes they did make a lovely noise, but most of the bottles actually stayed intact.  The bottles were carefully removed from the water and laid out to dry in the sun.  They did look wonderful, all crazed and shining.

After the bottles were dry I had what I had anticipated would be a fun job, smashing up the bottles.  Boy, how wrong I was!  Each bottle was wrapped in a newspaper parcel and smashed with a hammer into small bits and placed in a container.  I then had to pick out all the larger bits for resmashing.  Now when Louise did it, I was wincing as she was gloveless and confident.  I on the other hand, do not like pain!  I asked for gloves, which I realised after was a mistake as the tiny splinters caught in the gloves and then worked their way into my fingers.  I have to admit, I was a bit of a wimp about it.  Finally poor Louise had to get me some tweezers to use for an annoying splinter.  I removed the gloves in the end, which was a lot better.  Thank goodness she only wanted me to smash 6 bottles.  I probably would have enjoyed it more if I'd had plastic fingers, so I didn't get splinters.  Or even better, if someone else smashed the bottles and got the splinters!

The pain wasn't over however as I also had to grade the glass, using baskets and a sieve.  Basically it was pouring the frit into one basket with holes, to another with different sized holes, shaking it to sieve out the different size bits.  These are the stacked baskets of frit.  As you can imagine, we all had our shoes on as there was glass everywhere.  I realised somewhere in the process that when you work with glass bits, you need a confident touch and to just stop being a wimp about it and put your hand in there.  Miraculously, I didn't have a single cut at the end of the day.

When the plaster moulds were dry enough, they were put into the oven on little stands, to bake.  We filled the time to the next stage with talking about different pieces of glass that Louise had on display and wondering whether we too could make something similar.  Louise was very patient in explaining how things were made and had lots of pictures to show us.

When the moulds were removed from the kiln they were touched up by smoothing edges, sharpening up the design and getting rid of any stray bits of clay.  Jennifer and Robin had chosen a bottle each, which they duly had to clean up as I had done.  Their project did not involve frit but a process known as slumping.  Their bottle was centred into the mould (with a hanging wire inserted into the bottle mouth) and placed in the kiln.  The moulds were then levelled using a spirit level and supports.  The glass softens in the kiln and expands into the mould space.

While they were doing all that, my design time had finally arrived.  Back into the glass my poor fingers went and I sketched out my design in glass on the plaster meringue.  As you can see, by this time I was very hot and sweaty!

Once the design was laid out, I went back over it with fine frit to help fill the gaps.  Of course this completely ruined the shape I had laid out!  Next up came a fine paintbrush to help me dust all the glass back into shape.  It was looking distinctly lop-sided by this time, but it was too far along to reshape it any better.  Finally, when that was done, I carried it out and placed it into the kiln and was fired overnight.

It was rather exciting to go back to collect my glass.  I had been somewhat worried that maybe I hadn't put enough glass on the design so that it wouldn't actually be in one whole piece, but I needn't have worried as I ended up with a beautiful snowflake.  Maybe not exactly symmetrical, but I think it looks really good for a first attempt.  I love that it actually looks like ice (or is that just to the artist's eye?!).

Robin's paw print design.  Her project started life as a square rather than round bottle.

Jennifer's blue bottle started life as a sparkling wine bottle, so the glass is quite thick.  

Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes I have signed up to make something else, my head is positively bubbling with ideas and no, it doesn't look like Alan is going to buy me a kiln for Christmas.  The most it appeared that he was willing to do, was to empty a few wine bottles to help me build up some stock!!!