Glass

The choice of glass for my new project is crucial. It will not be back lit as it's to be mounted in a frame to hang on a wall. Clearly, the glass that I use has to be of an opaque nature, with interesting patterning within the glass. Texture should also play an important part.

It was with this in mind that I visited my favourite stained glass supplier at Tempsford. I had thought originally that I might use a very dark black baroque glass with a vibrant red glass as a contrast. It would make a mark and stand out from the crowd.

Baroque glass has the advantage of being textured in a swirly wave kind of way. The sort of glass that you would be tempted to touch and run your fingers over. A truly sensory glass. I had used this type of glass before in a previous project to great effect. During the assembly I had run my fingers over it and got down to eye level with it to ensure that the curves in the glass naturally followed on as in the original piece of glass. There had been no room for mistakes.

On discovering that the piece of glass that I had envisaged was not available, I had to have a major rethink. Fortunately I had taken a provisional cartoon with me. I spotted a beautiful piece of red patterned glass, but was unable to find another piece of glass that would suit both it and my design.

I finally settled on a fabulous piece of Youghiogheny glass in shades of green. The other glass that I selected was a ripple backed Uroboros art glass. The advantage of both of these glasses are that they are unique. In production they are hand ladled and hand mixed which means that even if the glass has the same code number, each sheet is different.

Another customer looked admiringly at the Youghiogheny glass and suggested that she would be tempted to 'put it in a frame just as it was'. I knew I had found the right piece.