These are small glass bottles I made in borosilicate class. They are quite challenging to make, which is most of the reason I’m fond of them.

I made this the same day I made the clear glass fish. It cracked in a few places. Oops. Forgot to keep it consistently heated. Guess even borosilicate has limits. It’s about four inches long and two and a half inches tall.

I wanted to make some other animals, but crows don’t look good in clear, so I made swans instead.

This is what I made in my first day of borosilicate class. Borosilicate glass is a lot like soft glass, except that it’s more tolerant of heat variations. The disadvantage is that it’s more expensive. I made fish because they’re symmetrical, so they’re easy, and they have a lot of fins, so I could practice joints, but the fins can be almost any size and shape, so it’s hard to get it wrong. Everything is clear because I had to order colored glass and it took a while to get there.

These are very small: no more than two and a half inches long and about an inch wide.

This is the last of the posts from hotshop unless I can take the class again this autumn.  The next posts are going to be of the things I made in borosilicate class, punctuated by my new little books.