In collaboration with 100Watt Network, I have designed some new glass pieces which will be the foundation for a new line of lighting, called Bodega. These pendants are all handblown into molds that we built in-house (see a brief video here). The geometric forms are a blend of art deco light fixtures, crossed with mod glass of the 1960s and ’70s. I’ve tried to update the ideas using the magic of CAD to develop the forms, more contemporary colors, and really excellent hardware.

100 Watt is putting the final touches on the lighting components to go with this glass. At present we’re expecting to be able to offer the lamps with either traditional incandescent, medium-base sockets or the new, super-swank LED emitters which will draw only a couple watts and will NEVER NEED A BULB CHANGE.

Please direct inquiries to 100 watt network – they will be handling all retail and wholesale lighting orders.

The post Let there be LIGHT 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.

Since that time, we have worked on a number of pieces – both blown and kiln-formed – which continue her conversations among objects and processes, repetition of forms and modular multiples, photographs and their subjects, rendered again as objects. Far from being a glass artist, Gay is equally facile in executing works using complex industrial processes as well as homespun crafty-crafts. I’m pleased to have had the continuing experience of helping her to realize her ideas, and this is exactly the kind of client and relationship I think sets my studio apart from so many other production-only studios.

Gay is mounting a solo show at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco for the month of February. The opening reception is Thursday, Feb 5 from 5:30 – 7:30. Here is a bit of background lifted from the show’s press release:

For over twenty years Gay Outlaw has used the camera to examine the representation of three-dimensional objects in the 2-D photograph. Over time her studio practice grew to feature 3-D artworks using unconventional materials such as prepared food. Working with pattern, repetition and manipulating the illusion of sculptural space, she draws our attention to depth, shadow, weight and proportion. Gay’s work plays actual depth against the illusion of depth, and subverts expectations given to familiar shapes and materials. Combining glass, wood, bronze, cloth, papier-maché and cardboard, her new works are richly playful adventures.

Gay has shown her work nationally, including exhibitions at the Sculpture Center in New York, the University Art Museum, Cal State Long Beach, the Berkeley Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her works are in the collections of the SFMOMA, Berkeley Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the di Rosa Preserve in Napa.

See more of Gay’s work at her website.

The post Gay Outlaw first appeared on StudioBlog :: Jeff Benroth Glass.

new solid almond thing

It seems like some of the most interesting ideas for new product come from explorations of ideas that have no relation to commercial viability. To wit:

These almond-shaped solid glass elements, with their semi-sharp edge and hand-wrought variations, began as experiments for a possible installation in a gallery with exposed brick walls. In thinking about that texture and wanting to accentuate it, I thought it might be interesting to make some solid elements which would loosely magnify the surface behind them. So now the unfinished lenses are laying around the studio, and everyone who comes through is transfixed by them. They love the weight, love the optics, love the irregular forms – and everyone wants one. In fact, all but one of the samples I made for myself and the gallery (granted, the imperfect ones) are sold and gone.

This studio snapshot of the remaining piece is one of the larger ones we’ve made: it’s 15″ x 7.5″ x 4″, it weighs 18 lb and still wears the remains of its “sculpture punty” (that snotty bit on the back end that will eventually be ground and polished away). I am still exploring scale and thinking about price for these so I welcome your feedback.

The post New Lenses 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.

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