13. starting over

It's been a while since I posted an installment of 'becoming a glass artist'. You can review, or if you haven't read it you can catch up here. Be sure to read from the bottom up for chronological order...

In 1994 we started running out of money and had to go back to work. I found myself making cold calls and trips to designers’ offices to promote our work and studio again, trying to reconnect with or forge new relationships. Designers who I had done work for in the past had moved on to other vendors. Designers who I had pissed off in the past gave me the cold shoulder. The folly of focusing on architects to spec work in the past came home to me. We made new contacts, re-established some others and begged trolled for work. Now that we were not supporting employees our income needs were different and slowly work started trickling back in but still, we teetered on the edge for several years.

The best thing that came out of that time was that we decided to learn how to do the pate de verre technique of casting glass after seeing pictures of the work done in the late 19^th century in France and also the work of Doug Anderson in the 70s. We wanted something to do for ourselves, something where we had only ourselves to please. We learned that Dan Fenton (a very knowledgeable fellow on glass casting techniques) was in town doing a workshop at a local stained glass supply, he had a week to kill til his next commitment so we arranged, with a friend, to have him do a private workshop for us and a few others. Mostly what he taught us was how to make frit (crushed glass that is essential to the pate de verre technique) but he also allowed us to connect some dots in our own knowledge. There is a detailed tutorial/explanation of this technique on this page of our website.

We spent the next two or three years making frit, experimenting with mold materials, casting small hearts and other shapes, learning to work in wax. We used cheap crystal from K-Mart, we made frit from fusible sheet glass, we bought cheap fusible frit from a company in California but their supply was iffy. We tried out kiln schedules and kilns we borrowed or built. We bought any books we could find that had even related material to what we wanted to do. We dedicated Fridays and weekends to this pursuit. Eventually we felt accomplished enough and started making small bowls, 6” x 3”, using the lost wax technique, reproduction molds and two part press molds. Fortunately around this time, Bullseye Glass, who made the fusible sheet glass we had, started selling fusible frit. I say fortunately because if we had had to continue making our own frit we probably would not have continued to pursue this technique.