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| Fused glass drop vases |
A few weeks ago while experimenting with the techniques in Paul Tarlow's ebook, "Creative Fused Glass Drop-Out Vessels" (
see previous post) I was inspired to design a few more traditional drop vases (I call them traditional because of the rim on the vase). I finally made some time today to get some photographs of the finished vases. I thought I would share the results, along with the firing schedule for the drops.
The round blanks for the vases were all three layers thick with varying diameters and designs, which were fired to fuse the pieces together and then cold-worked to refine the edges. For the second firing to turn the flat slabs of glass into vases, I used the basic drop technique of putting a drop-out mold on kiln-post "stilts" and letting the glass drop through.
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| Round blank ready for firing |
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| Completed drop vase |
The kiln set-up for the drop is at the left, and the completed vase is at the right. The finished piece is 6" tall with stand/4.5" without.
Here's another, larger vase. Dimensions are 4" tall without stand; 7.75" rim diameter, and 5" opening.
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Blue-wispy fused glass vase without stand.
See this piece with its stand in my on-line store. |
Mauve vase. The design on the rim is created with hand-painted enamels and various sizes of glass frit. I really like how the light mauve opaque glass stretches as the glass flows to the center of the vase.
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| Pink and mauve fused glass vase |
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| Closer look at the rim. |
Each of the vases was completed in a separate firing, and I watched them carefully at the drop stage of firing. Here's the schedule that worked well for me, in my kiln. Note that the glass I use is System 96; the sheet glass was Spectrum and most of the frit was Uroboros.
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Schedule for the two smaller vases. The larger vase had a longer anneal time at 950 deg F.
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Note that the schedule above shows a 60 minute hold at 1250 deg F for the completion of the drop. The two smaller vases took approximately 40 minutes each; the larger one about 20. Total firing for each vase was just under 15 hours!
Firing schedule Excel template courtesy of Paul Tarlow. It can be downloaded from his www.fusedglass.org web site here.
Perhaps this blog post will inspire you to create some drop-out vases of your own. Feel free to leave a comment if there are questions I can answer!
Dana
These drop vases and a few other new items will soon be available in my on-line store.
