Creamy vanilla and earthy blue glass platter with pops of mint.
A field of glass murrine, reminiscent of anemones, surrounds insets of creamy vanilla stripes and organic waves of cobalt blue and mint. Perfect for display or serving.
--
One of my favorite glass techniques is creating murrine. I load up a crucible with a carefully designed stack of sheet glass, heat it to 1500 degrees in a kiln with a hole in the bottom, and stand underneath the kiln, pulling the molten glass out into rods about 3/8" in diameter. As you might guess, this an activity best reserved for cool weather! Once cooled, I chop the cane into short cross-sections, which display the layers of glass like tree rings.
Pulling the glass cane takes a few hours and requires constant attention. You don't pull it constantly, but you have to give it a gentle tug every 35 seconds or so, which gives you juuuuuust enough time to get distracted between tugs and intentionally leave it for a minute or two. While my goal is to pull rods that are fairly consistent in thickness, of the course of a session, I often end up with several thick globs, reminiscent of deer knees.
Far from being a disappointment, these deer knees afford me a wonderful opportunity to make special components with a very organic feel. I stand them upright in the kiln, with tall sheets of glass among them, and dam them so they settle down into a thick brick of glass when heated. Since the knees are quite irregular in width, the glass flows a lot and makes interesting shapes within the brick. I'll then slice the brick up on a tile saw to get three-ish fun inserts for use in other works.
This platter is built around two of these inserts, bookended to make a flowing a diamond. On either end of the diamond, I arranged thin strips of creamy vanilla glass on end in a V shape to echo the shape of the central diamond.
In the corners of the platter, you'll find cross-sections from the same cane pull, arranged chronologically across the platter in the order in which the cane came out of the crucible.
Fused and slumped.