The post Make your own casting :: Saturday August 8, 10am – 4pm first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.

More generally called open-face casting, it’s a very basic and direct process used also with resins, metal, plaster or wax (sand candles, anyone?).

But it also involves that element of playing with sand, reminiscent of a day at the beach, that I think gets people into a spontaneous, creative mood. Watching the glass ooze out of the ladle and into the form will impress most anyone – it looks like electric honey. And since the process doesn’t require a lot of skill to participate in, the accessibility gives everyone a chance to try making something in glass. The trick is to extract from this process something that looks as good four days later when it’s cold as it did when it was being poured hot, and you had a beer in your hand.

The post Not-blown glass first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.

Unless it’s painted or stained somehow, glass gets its hue from metal oxides and minerals. These are incorporated into the mixture of raw materials  before it is melted, and voila – colored glass.

In factories and large-studios, colors may be formulated and melted in-house. These are usually proprietary, and some are easier to replicate than others. If a studio or factory is melting an entire furnace of colored glass, the intensity can also be controlled with the formulation. Additionally, the number of colors available will depend on the number of furnaces or melting chambers, and unless it’s a very large factory or one that uses only a few colors, it is not unusual to see a cycle of colors melted over time – the melts often go from light to dark over a period of weeks or months, then the pot is “washed” with clear glass and the cycle begins again.

In “small” studios like mine, we have one furnace and it’s got clear glass in it. With all the different colors required by our production and custom projects, it would be impractical to try to melt color to satisfy our needs, on-the-fly – although some studios maintain a second furnace with one or more smaller pots in it, which can be filled with colors as needed for individual runs. We (and many other studios) use pre-formulated, concentrated colors which come from color houses and are standardized – much like tubes of paint. There are hundreds of colors available and a whole science and technology has developed over the years for their use and application.

They typically come in three basic formats: rod, powder, and frit. The rod is a baton of solid glass, powder is self-explanatory, and “frit” refers to granules, which are sorted and sold in different sizes. All of these are applied to each piece as it is worked, rather than thrown into a furnace. This make the process of blowing any one piece slightly longer, but with much more color control and possibilities for variation.

Because the color is so concentrated, we use a very thin layer of it; if you were to evaluate it by weight, the colored glass only accounts for perhaps 5% of the volume of the finished piece, at most. So if you’re lucky enough to break a piece of our glass, look at the edge of one of the pieces. It will show you that what looked like a totally colored object is (or was) in fact clear glass with a thin layer or two of color sandwiched into the wall.

Amen.

The post How do you get color in the glass? first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.

venini polyhedral chandelier

As we do more and more custom restoration projects, we are beginning to amass a collection of interesting molds. They are a great way to produce complex forms, but mold-formed designs also require that replacements be made in the same mold, or one produced to the same specifications. One in particular that has been worthwhile is a mold for reproduction chandelier elements – they’re called “Polyhedrals”, and the Venini factory made a ton of them for all sorts of chandeliers and sconces. These faceted blown forms are designed to be tightly arranged in a matrix, with their broad faces aligned. It makes for a beautiful design, but one that rattles a lot when handled or shaken by an earthquake. That also makes for a lot of broken pieces, which has created a demand for replacement elements.

I decided it would be manageable and fun to build a mold specifically to reproduce these polyhedrals. As far as I know Venini no longer makes the elements, and no one else seems to have wanted to approach the replacement market for these. The mold is a simple two-part affair, cast from iron and hand-finished to the same dimensions as the originals. Some of the pieces were blown into this form straight from the furnace, while others were first dipped in an “optic” mold to give them ribs or other variations in wall thickness.

JBG mold

So, now we have become an aftermarket-manufacturer of near-OEM Venini components. If you know anyone who sloshed one of these lighting fixtures around and lost a few pieces, pass on our info and we’ll be happy to talk to them about getting some new pieces made.

The post Molds, molds, molds first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.

I’ll be bringing the Stripe Vase in a new color – Mandarin – as a result of the color experiments we did for Sunset Magazine. And, I’ve finally decided to display the Tall Bottles as a wholesale item. Due to shipping constraints they won’t be as tall as some of the pieces that have been shown in local galleries, but at 24″ – 40″ they’re still pretty good, and I hope will do well.

I have to take just a moment to thank my amazing photographer, Chris Wahlberg. Here’s a teaser and I will post more pics of these later, promise.

arranging bottles in the studio

The post Tent City (a.k.a. the New York Gift Show) first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.

NYT :: The Nature of Glass Remains Anything but Clear – July 29, 2008

The post runny windows first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.

What makes this kind of product eco-friendly, enviro-huggy? On the one hand you can make the case that it never will be; we burn through a tremendous amount of energy to produce a product that isn’t really even needed. People can eat food off pressed bamboo plates, or put flowers in a repurposed coffee can, or drink wine from a mason jar and call it a day.

Or you can make the case that no matter what energy is expended on a handmade object, it is more green than a manufactured one because it will be valued and cherished, perhaps for generations.

So here’s an interesting take on efficiency of glassmaking, from a very different perspective.

NYT :: Starting to Think Outside the Jar – June 15, 2008

The post greenwashing first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.