Test today, make tomorrow...

Week 6

The last few weeks have busy developing the deign ideas and narrowing down the options.  I had explored a few themes within Destiny, including a piece I was drawn to on self reflection and destiny, however the pull of the Norse mythology has been too strong.  I'd continued the development of the twine bowl idea and various ways to incorporate the sagas of the Norn and the Valkyries and have settled on a series of vessels being the threads of life, bowl and a shallow plate; I've a couple of exhibition accessories that I am considering however these are the main themes I will progress for this brief.

I've considered my pallet and having looked at Nordic art and life I have been struck by their use of amber for jewellery and fine ware along with the use of cobalt blue in their pallet in clothing, ornaments and decoration, including on battle shields.  I am going to limit my pallet to these two colours and have chosen Bullseye medium amber and steel blue; the steel blue has a fatalistic aspect to it as it is known as a reactive glass meaning it can suffer a colour change when exposed to certain glass types (including the medium amber) and can also change its appearance from coloured to a steel pewter finish, how fitting for a Destiny piece that the glass itself can have its own outcome.

First thing first, testing:

First of all a test firing of amber sheet glass and steel blue powdered glass.  This will inform me of the colour combination, thickness of powder required to achieve a colour saturation; all aspects of consideration for my plate.

Alternating the amber on top of clear Tekta glass or clear on top of the amber.

A healthy layer of steel blue powder is applied to both and set into the kiln for firing.  I will give them a full fuse firing to achieve a smooth rounded edged finish with the blue fusing into the amber and not remaining texturised on the surface.

After firing you can see the nice glassy finish and the blue has turned into a shadow of colour on the surface however the edges and corners are nicely rounded.  This test tells me the powder needs to be thicker, that the clear is better on the base as that will allow the blue to react with the amber and that a soft plate finish can be achieved.

The next test is for the bowl.  I want to try using the casting method 'Pate de Verre' for this.  Pate de Verre  can produce some incredible colour combination castings where the colours cane be placed and separated very accurately, something you could not achieve with a conventional investment methods.

Pate de Verre uses powder or frit glass to create a paste by mixing with a 7% water and gum Arabic solution.  The pasts is just right when it can be spread up the sides of your mixing bowl and it sticks (as shown below).  Different finishes, from course granular to glass smooth, can be achieved through how wet the mix is and what temperature it is fired at.  It also allows you to layer the paste which then lets to achieve two different finishes on the two different surfaces; hopefully this test will demonstrate many of these principles.

I'm going to use a piece of my maquette mould to test the Pate de Verre, this will give me shape, form and textures.  You can see that I have separate dishes to mix the glass paste.

You can also see how the paste sticks to the walls of the dishes.

I applied the paste in colour stripes as I want to explore which colours work best with the thread texture and also how they each respond to a course and smooth application.  You can see how the glass is holding onto the sides of the mould.

 The glass has been fired and you can see how glossy and smooth the upper surface is.  You can also see aspects of shrinkage at the top and bottom of the mould.  This is something that you have to consider with Pate de Verre as the glass is powdered so it has air and liquids between the grains so once these are fired out the glass will pull together and both shrink and thin; the higher the temperature the more pronounced.

Once the glass has been carefully removed , or divested, from the mould you see just how much plaster has been held by the course textured glass surfaced.  The picture underneath shows the same piece after it has been carefully cleaned using brushes, water soaking and finally a very weak solution of hydrophloric  acid

 I am really pleased with my test results.  They have informed me with regards to the colour combinations, textures, level of cast detail and also the combination and saturation levels.  Once I finalise my designs I will be ready to get making.