Zebras: Iridized and Fused

I have become quite fascinated with fusing iridized glass!  The results are quite satisfying! So, here's how I made my latest project. My subject? Zebras!!!! I knew the stripes would look so cool with the irid glass.

First, I selected my glass. The base color I want to use is black with an iridized surface.

The top piece of glass I chose is clear with an iridized surface. Unfortunately, clear glass doesn't show up too well in pictures, so I don't have a picture of it.

After giving both pieces of glass a good scrubbing, I applied the super secret, magic sticky film called resist to the irid side of the black and the clear glass. Then I drew two zebras on the black resist. On the clear resist, I drew the mirror image of the two zebras. Carefully, I used an Exacto knife to remove resist from areas I wanted to sandblast off the irid color.

I was now ready to go into the sandblaster. Wearing safely glasses, a mask, long sleeves and gloves, I entered the sandblaster and blasted away on my glass. When I finished, I peeled off all the remaining resist.

I placed the clear glass face down on top of the black irid glass and the mirror images of the zebras match up exactly!!! Into the kiln it went to be fused together at a crazy hot temperature off 1000 degrees for several hours.

Today, after the kiln had cooled enough to open, this is what I got!  So pleased!!! Can't wait to use it at my next cocktail party for cheese and crackers or bacon wrapped dates!

(All pictures are mine)

Underground Stained Glass

Chicago was the destination for our family girls’ trip this year. What a wonderful city! The architecture is amazing. After the great fire of 1871, the city was rebuilt to rival the most beautiful city in the world, Paris.  The busy streets are wide. The river waterways are well traveled and wind magnificently through the city. The 37 bridges that cross the river are counter-weighted so that they could be raised by hand if necessary! Engineers have devised a system of channel locks that have even reversed to flow of the river to keep the Chicago city pollution from flowing into Lake Michigan. Wow! 

But with all beauty, extreme engineering and architecture above ground, you won’t believe what is beneath the city! Deep underneath the city’s streets is a maze of corridors as complex as the tunnels of an anthill. Locals know this amazing network of underground corridors as the Chicago Pedway.  The construction of the tunnels began in 1951. The purpose was to keep the pedestrians in the city separate and safe from the dangers of vehicles and foul weather as they walked to their workplace, stores or school. Today the tunnel system connects train stations, retail stores, hotels, apartment buildings, skyscrapers and parks.  A tunnel network that winds underneath 40 city blocks!

Map of Chicago Pedway
(Photo courtesy of Google Images and reddit.com)

So what does this have to do with stained glass? Hold on. I'm getting to it!

Basically, the Pedway is just a plain, functional concrete and tile tunnel system.  But one particular section of this underground walkway unexpectedly became the highlight of my trip. Along the lower edge of Macy’s underneath Randolph Street between State Street and Wabash Avenue, workers have permanently installed 22 American Victorian stained glass windows! Backlighting adds light and beauty for the passing pedestrians.  

This unbelievably magnificent showcase of stained glass windows is on display as a result of a joint effort between Macy’s, the Chicago Cultural Mile Association, Navy Pier’s Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows and donors. All 22 windows are part of an exquisite 143 stained glass window collection owned by E. B. Smith and his wife Maureen which has been on display in the Smith Museum on Chicago's Navy Pier. But why put all this irreplaceable, delicate art in an underground passageway?  The sponsors of this exhibit believe that art educates and that it adds beauty to public spaces. They believe that art should be easily accessible by all and should placed in locations where millions of everyday people pass as they go about their daily lives.

I love this concept! This coordinated, cooperative effort by these three Chicago businesses (as well as numerous donors) resulted in an art gallery that is free to the public.

The Macy's wall plaque at the center of this exhibit proclaims this showcase of stained glass windows   as "pioneering." I get it that the exhibit is exciting, unique and inspiring, but "pioneering"?  How were these American Victorian stained glass windows groundbreaking or original?

Victorian means that these windows were made during the Victorian Era when Queen Victoria ruled in Great Britain (1837-1901). But Victorian stained glass in Great Britain and Victorian stained glass in America were very different by the end of the era. In Great Britain, Victorian stained glass windows hung in churches and depicted religious subject matters. The figures, shapes and colors in these windows were painted on clear glass that had been cut and held in place with lead came. In America, this same style was used during the early Victorian Era, but by the late 1800s, American glass artists began to experiment with new and more creative glass forms and styles. They began to put their own original and secular spin on this previously European religious art style and they began to use colored and textured glass instead of painted glass.  The 22 American Victorian stained glass windows in the Chicago Pedway were made in the late Victorian Era between 1880 to 1910 and were made for private residences and public buildings, not churches. They each depict a secular, nature based subject, rather than a religious one. These windows also have minimal or no painted glass in them.  Instead, the artists of these windows primarily used colored glass to create their figures and shapes. The artists also employed a new and distinctly American technique in their works. They used colored glass and 3-D effects (faceted jewels, chunks of glass and layered glass) to raise the glass off of the flat window plane surface toward the audience or back behind the window plane to create depth and movement color. In time, glass artists in Europe began doing this as well and called it "Art Nouveau".

So who were these pioneering American glass artists? In the late 1800s, two stained glass artist contemporaries, Louis Comfort Tiffany and John LaFarge, sought better ways to present art in glass. Louis C. Tiffany, son the the famous jeweler Charles Tiffany, was a relentless force in the new glass art form emerging in the United States in the late 19th century.  Tiffany disliked the "dull and artificial" look of brush strokes on glass. He felt he could not make an inspiring window with paint and wanted to create his figures using only the medium of glass. He worked for years with his chemist and furnace man to do what seemed impossible: combine metal oxides with molten glass to create colored glass. Finally he succeeded.

At the same time, John La Farge was also working tirelessly to discover ways to color glass to create glass art that would inspire and astound. He also succeeded in forcing metal oxides to combine with molten glass to color it. His patent for his opalescent glass was filed in 1879 and granted in 1880. Tiffany's patent for his opalescent and "favrile" (iridescent) glass was granted in 1881. They were neck and neck in the race for this groundbreaking and completely American art style. Because of the artistic competition between Tiffany and La Farge and their relentless pursuit of the "perfect" glass, we are able to admire and enjoy American stained glass windows like we find in the Chicago Pedway today.

These are my three favorite American Victorian stained glass windows from the Chicago Pedway. It was hard to narrow it down to just three because the vibrant and compelling colors and composition of each window was absolutely entrancing. I could have stayed and looked at the windows over and over for hours. I hope many of you will have the opportunity to visit this fabulous "secret" exhibit in Chicago.

All photos are my own unless otherwise noted.


References:

www.biography.com/people/louis-tiffany

www.chicagobusiness.com
www.chicagoculturalmile.com
www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131206/loop/stained-glass-windows-installed-pedway-from-smith-museum
Eaton, Connie Clough. Tiffany Windows Stained Glass Pattern Book. Dover Publications, Inc.,      Mineola, New York. 1997. (books.google.com)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pedway
Macy's Plaque on Pedway Wall
www.morsemuseum.org

www.publicartinchicago.com
"Stained Glass. A Journal Devote to the Craft of Painted and Stained Glass," Volume 74.Stained Glass Association of America, 1979.  (books.google.com)
www.urbanglass.org
Yarnall, James L. John La Farge, A Biographical and Critical Study. Ashgate Publishing Company, Burlington, VT. 2012 (books.google.com)

I found this piece of DICHROIC GLASS and.......

So, I was wandering through my favorite glass supply store (Romaine's Stained Glass) and saw this piece of glass. I have seen it many, many times before, but this particular time it grabbed my attention because of how the sunlight was shining on it and creating fabulously fantastic colors. As I walked around it, the glass changed colors from gold to purple to purplish red!!! This piece of dichroic glass had to be mine.


And me being me, I had to know what exactly dichroic glass is and why it shows such dramatic and varied colors. I talked to other glass artists,  and researched it online as well. What I found out was absolutely fascinating.
But then....I'm a glass freak. So......here's the Reader's Digest version of what I discovered.


First of all, dichroic glass is not easily obtained. The process to make it is so complex that only a few companies in the world manufacture this spectacular and multi-purpose glass. Webster says the word "dichroic" comes from two Greek words: "di" which means two and "chros" which means colors, or more exactly, skin. This two-colored "skinned" glass is created by a complicated, high tech process in which metals like gold, silver or aluminum, or oxides like titanium, zirconium or magnesium, are vaporized into dust inside a vacuum chamber by the blast of an electron beam. Gravity causes the vaporized metal or oxide dust to gently settle onto the surface of a sheet of hot glass at the bottom of the airless vacuum chamber. This vaporizing and settling of metal or oxide dust onto the hot glass is repeated until there is a "skin" of color on the glass. This dichroic skin looks much like the swirling iridescent rainbow of colors you see when oil floats on water. Once the dust layer is thick enough to see (but still thinner than an onion skin), the coated glass is kiln fired at a high temperature to fuse the metal or oxide to the glass.

I was surprised to find out that archeologists have discovered shards of dichroic glass that date as far back as the 4th century AD when Constantine the Great was emperor of the Roman Empire! Look at this picture of the "Lycurgus Cup" from this time period. The glass in this cup looks green in the daylight and red when lit up at night! Wow! How did the ancient Romans make the dichroic glass that could do this?

Lycurgus Cup (Photo courtesy of Google Images, pintrest.com and rsc.org)                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      I was also surprised to discover that the process we use today to make our modern dichroic glass (using electron beams, vacuum chamber, etc.) was invented by NASA beginning in the 1960s to make dichroic glass for use in their satellite mirrors, space suit helmets, and re-entry tiles on the space shuttles! Who knew? This micro-thin layer of metal dust fused onto the glass makes the glass able filter out the light rays that are harmful to astronauts and their equipment when they are traveling and exploring in  deep space.

 Dichroic glass earrings

Dichroic glass necklace pendant

Glass artists used dichroic glass in many ways. One popular use to to make jewelry.

   

Dichroic glass necklace pendant
(Photo courtesy of
en.wikipedia.org)

Other glass artists may sparingly use dichroic glass in their glass art endeavors by cutting and incorporating it into windows or mosaics, but most dichroic glass use for artists is in hot work with fusing, slumping and glassblowing. But you're not an artist, you say?  For my many movie fanatic friends....every time you use an LCD projector or watch a 3D movie you are using a dichroic glass optical filter!!


Needless to say, this glass is rather expensive. You know, the more rare something is and the more difficult it is to make, the pricier it is. I am pondering and dreaming of what this piece of glass will become. Once I decide, I will share it with you and take you on a blog journey of the creation of some spectacular (hopefully!!) piece of glass art from this flat round piece of dichroic glass. I know it won't be anything for space travel and it won't be a piece of jewelry. I do have one or two things in mind though.

References

https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2012/cg_2.html 

https://www.theglasscastle.com.au/what-dichroic-glass

http://www.estarlight.net/dichroic-glass.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_glass 

All photos are my own unless otherwise noted.